


better fate than wisdom

by roboticake



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Blood, Body Horror, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Torture, It used to be cute, M/M, Mutual Pining, Obligatory Honeypot Mission, They are so dense it's painful to read, but now bring the
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-08-12 01:57:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7916011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roboticake/pseuds/roboticake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times their kiss (supposedly) doesn't matter, and one time it does (a lot).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hellooo ! First time writing these Dads. It's mostly canon compliant, but probably has some issues regarding the timeline. I tried to respect it as much as I could, though (by being quite vague about it in my fic).
> 
> This fic sort of has a plot, but it's mostly a bunch of excuses to write Jack and Gabe ~~making out~~ kissing (I love them I want them to be happy *clenches fist*).
> 
> Oh, and the title is from a famous E. E. Cummings' poem, "Since feeling is first".

 

When the pompous higher-ups told Gabriel Reyes about this simple mission in Madrid, he didn’t think about it much. Retrieve and seize stolen data wasn’t really new for Overwatch, wasn’t it ? Especially after that whole Omnic crisis and everything that came with.

So Gabriel didn’t really prepare himself for ... Anything, really. It was an usually simple and easy kind of mission. Pose as an interested party ready to _donate_ quite a sum for the data, infiltrate the ball of the very rich thief, mingle and appear half stupid, half drunk, stealthily take the data back.

The mission was not supposed to be full of action, but here Gabriel was, running in foreign and unknown roads, sliding in narrow passageways, Jack Morrison’s voice in his earpiece giving indications in a hushed tone.

“Where the fuck are you ?” Gabriel growled, making a sharp turn, a shout and a shot echoing behind him. He winced.

“Did they see your face ? And turn right,” Jack said instead, and Hell, he sounded so collected Gabriel wanted to punch him right in his perfect, white, teeth.

He took a calming breath instead. “Not much. They won’t know me if I’m in a crowd... I guess.”

Jack hummed thoughtfully, and finally said something about turning left and meeting him in an adjacent alley. Gabriel hid his confusion by barking a way too sharp “ _okay_ ”, brows furrowed.

Why did Jack want to meet ? Back up ? No, no. Gabriel didn’t really need it, unless cornered. Right now, it was a fight or flight situation, and everyone involved in this mission insisted that he settled for flight if a critical situation had to appear. The less bodies they had to deal with, the better. They, or more accurately, Overwatch, needed to stay low profile as much as they could.

Gabriel turned again, into the alley Jack was supposed to be, but found no one around. He swore, blinking the sweat away from his eyes. Where was his partner ? He couldn’t wait around too long. He didn’t have any weapon nor any means to defend himself, as the thief had everyone searched upon entering his estate ; and enhanced soldier or not, he could do close to nothing alone if he had to face a group of armed guards.

Suddenly, hands closed tightly around the collar of his coat, and Gabriel gasped, fighting his way out of the grasp, only to find Jack staring at him. The blonde was unsuccessfully trying peel off his coat and hat at the same time, and Gabriel pushed him away harshly.

“The fuck, Jack ?”

“Shut up.”

Jack’s voice left room to no arguments, but when he took a step toward Gabriel again, he stopped long enough to let him protest. Gabriel hesitated. After a beat, upon hearing footsteps that weren’t theirs approach, he sighed heavily, and let Jack do whatever he wanted to do. His partner always had terrible ideas, but since it kind of worked out most of the time, Gabriel decided to play along _again_.

His long, black coat and hat were hastily pulled off and thrown in the nearest dumpster, and Jack ran a hand in his black hair, messing them up and making Gabriel huff, annoyed. He didn’t notice Jack approaching even more, casually breaching his personal space.

“Jack,” Gabriel warned, heart beating faster in apprehension and adrenaline as he heard heavy boots stomping on asphalt. “They are coming.”

Jack sighed, his breath smelling of those disgusting honey candies he liked to gobble up.

“I know,” he said, “just look at me, okay ?”

And Gabriel finally understood. He pursed his lips and rose his arms, looping them around Jack’s waist. He was sweating and probably stinking, but his partner didn’t seem to care. Emboldened, Jack even pressed flush against him.

“You sure about this, blondie ?” Gabriel whispered, squirming, feeling uneasy. “Because that’s just weird. And they will see my face.”

Gabriel felt Jack shrug against him, hands reaching up to cup his jaw. He gulped down the lump of his throat. It was probably to hide as much as they could his face, but the gesture made Gabriel uncomfortable ; his eyes couldn’t help zeroing in on Jack’s mouth and it was a terrible, horrible idea, because Jack grinned.

“And now they won’t,” he said.

The first contact of Jack’s lips on his own was strange, tentative, and Gabriel sighed in resignation, his brown eyes sweeping up and glaring at Jack’s blue ones. The blonde chuckled, the sound muffled in their kiss, turning into a deep rumble vibrating both of their chests.

Considering their personalities, the kiss was surprisingly chaste. Jack’s usual sarcasm didn’t make it biting ; Gabriel constant annoyance didn’t make it harsh. It was simple, just an awkward press of lips against lips, nothing remotely romantic or sexual until Jack pushed Gabriel against the brick wall, crowding him and grasping his hair, and Gabriel lost it. He let out a moan, closed his eyes, opened his mouth to taste the remnant of honey and sugar on Jack’s tongue. The candies were still disgusting, Gabriel thought, but Jack's mouth wasn't _at all_.

Gabriel let himself being manhandled, Jack’s hands roaming around and messing his clothes, tugging on his tie, gripping his head and forcing it in the crook of the blonde’s neck. It was confusing and didn’t help Gabriel’s focus at all, his senses picking up Jack’s small, little groans and the way his ridiculous, cheap, perfume smelt of marigold. He still forced his eyes open, scanning the ground and watching the shadows of his pursuers tilting and approaching as he licked a strip of sweat salty skin.

Jack groaned, this time louder, and slid a knee between Gabriel thighs in retaliation. Shit. He needed to concentrate on the guards coming, not on Jack deliciously grinding against him, already half hard.

Behind them, Gabriel heard someone make a gagging sound, and another hiss a string of homophobic slurs in Spanish. A third and forth person yelled in unison, forcing the two gawkers to move on and concentrate on finding the _thieving son of a bitch_ , and the steps faded in the darkness of another road. Gabriel grinned, smug, and bit gently Jack’s neck before he took a step back. He tried to rearrange his locks of damp hair, too captivated by the sight of the blonde in front of him to efficiently do it.

Jack whimpered at the loss of contact. He was red all over, the blush dusting his fair skin and disappearing under the hem of his green shirt. For a moment, Gabriel contemplated the idea of undressing him, of tearing that stupid fabric apart to see if his chest was also as red as his cheeks.

But if Gabriel Reyes was a curious man, he was also a rational one. He cleared his throat and pointedly ignored the tent of Jack’s slacks, because, well, the blonde was probably doing the same with him.

“You could have brought guns,” Gabriel said, trying to settle back into their usual banter. He wanted to bury their intense make out session somewhere in his mind, deep enough so he _definitely_ won’t think about it.

Jack tilted his head, his fingers also combing his messy hair back into order, while Gabriel turned away sharply, opening the dumpster to distract himself. He wrinkled his nose in distaste, and silently mourned his expensive coat now coated in filth —the hat was too ridiculous to regret.

“Stealth mission, infiltration, stealing, all that, Gabe,” Jack replied, tugging on his shirt. He was smiling. “Didn't want to get noticed, and people are often too uncomfortable to disturb a couple, erm. Making out.” He coughed, once, and added, “Do you have the data ?”

Gabriel nodded, and Jack’s hand flew to his ear. He muttered their coordinates to the extraction team and patted Gabriel's shoulder, who tried very hard to not let his eyes focus on Jack’s kiss swollen lips.

“You’re a terrible kisser, blondie,” Gabriel said, throwing the data key in Jack's hands. He felt as if he needed to joke about their kiss to brush it aside, to exorcise it out of his mind.

Jack laughed. He stuffed the data key in his jacket.

Gabriel pretended to not see the two guns tucked inside.

 

  
Later, in the Overwatch helicopter hovering high above the Pyrenees, Ana eyed a sleeping Jack’s neck, marked by Gabriel teeth, and Gabriel sighed heavily.

“Don’t ask.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on Tumblr if you wanna talk : roboticake.tumblr.com


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack is a good liar, but Gabriel isn't a bad one either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I got delayed by my keyboard dying :(

If a lot of people wanted to say that Gabriel had a terrible mouth and would swear like a sailor given any opportunity, he wouldn't stop them. He never tried to hide his... _Colorful_ speech pattern, as Jack liked to call it. Still, when needed, Gabriel could be polite, flash gentle smiles and purr soft words. He had always been a very good liar, making him a fine choice for undercover missions.

Honeypot assignments weren't Gabriel's strong points, though, even if he could deal with them swiftly. Usually, the higher ups didn't want to send him : his face, still plastered on some old posters and military propaganda, was quite recognizable. But everyone was busy, Overwatch overworked and understaffed, and Gabriel was, in the end, reluctantly sent to deal with some rich, foreign prince who had a taste for gruff, strong, men.

His ability to lie was maybe why, since the day he copied some encrypted files in a very _charmed_ prince's room, another man, seemingly equally smitten beyond reason, was following him. Nothing that he couldn't handle, truly, just some harmless stalking that involved giggles and a lot of watching. It didn't really differ from Jack's horde of squealing fangirls.

The problem mostly resided in the fact that the stalker was not only aware of Gabriel's presence when the foreign prince's files got stolen, but was also obsessed enough to find out his true identity. It wasn't a difficult task, considering Gabriel's important involvement in the Omnic war, still, it arose a string of questions from the medias and the public : why was Gabriel there ? Why did he secretly fly away to some remote island ? Why Overwatch, that kept repeating over and over how overworked they were, let one of their top agent enjoy some ill timed vacations ?

For obvious reasons tied to communication and reputation, Gabriel couldn't just grab that pesky stalker, beat his face into a messy pulp and threaten his loved ones like he wanted to. But at least, with the help of an exasperated Ana and a very anxious public relation officer, Gabriel cleared up Overwatch's name from any secret honeypot mission and turned the blame on himself : they efficiently seized the chance to turn the stalker's discovery into some personal scandal, making the gossips focus on Gabriel and not on the organization. For a week, the huge, bold letters of the tabloids proudly showed “ _ **Gabriel Reyes, escaping duties to flirt !**_ ”.

It wasn’t really funny for Gabriel, but he guessed that he deserved it, since he was the one who wasn't careful enough to cover properly his tracks. At least, in the public eye, Overwatch was now clean from all suspicions of morally questionable missions, and rumors of unethical assignments quieted down quickly. They were replaced by a new fascination for Gabriel's love life, and since most of the discoveries weren't really accurate nor relevant, he learned to not give a damn about it.

Gabriel snorted. Jack seemed to care enough for the two of them, anyway. He remembered the blonde showing an uncharacteristic interest for the magazines, reading them with eyebrows gradually disappearing into his hairline.

Something moved from the corner of Gabriel’s eyes, pulling him out of his thoughts and making him scan the Overwatch courtyard, where he was, sitting on a bench. He could feel someone staring at him intently, and he shifted on his seat, uncomfortable. The stalker, probably. Again. Why didn't he give up ? There was nothing remotely interesting now.

Annoyance bubbled up in his chest, but Gabriel didn't do anything. Didn't budge. The stalker always managed to be only noticeable when there were people and curious gazes around, protecting him from Gabriel's wrath, or, more accurately, fists.

“You okay ?”

Jack had somehow walked to Gabriel without being noticed, giving him a sandwich as if it was some kind of peace offering. Gabriel grunted, snatched the food from his partner's hands and bit in it maybe too harshly. Jack, far from being offended by the lack of manners, chuckled. He sat down beside Gabriel, gazing the courtyard and the sun sinking in the horizon.

What exactly happened at Madrid didn’t really change their friendship. They both acted as if nothing happened, and Gabriel was quite satisfied by this outcome. While he liked the kiss (and the making out part, obviously), he was also immensely glad to not have lost his best friend over some meaningless distraction. Ana’s judging glance on his back also receded, and, while it took some time, normalcy was back in the headquarters again. Gabriel could now focus on other, more important, things.

“I guess you're not, then,” Jack finally said with a faint smile, his attention now fully on Gabriel. “What's wrong ? Your foreign lover still stalking you ?”

Despite the smile, there was a hint of sourness in Jack's voice. Gabriel decided to ignore it, rolling his eyes instead.

“He was just a guest of the prince's party,” he said, mouth full, “not my target. I don't know what he wants. I just... Said hello.”

Jack rose an eyebrow then narrowed his eyes, and Gabriel would have found it hilarious if he didn't seem so confused. The blonde scratched the top of his head, messing up his hair. Gabriel had to put an extra effort to not think about the last time he saw the blonde thoroughly disheveled.

Gabriel lied.

He still thought a lot about the kiss.

“Target ?” Jack repeated, uncertain. “What, you keep some list of people you want to, erm, screw ? That's... Weird, Gabe. Even from you.”

He made a face and Gabriel blinked, dumbfounded. He swallowed up a mouthful of sandwich, wiped the mayonnaise off his chin and said, deliberately slow as he was talking to a particularly dense child, “he was not the _honeypot mission_ target, Jack.”

“Oh.”

It was the only thing the blonde said for a while, but his body visibly relaxed. Gabriel grinned, punching Jack's shoulder playfully, snickering.

“What, so you thought I was flying away to fuck people ?” he asked, barely repressing the amusement in his voice. “You really should stop reading shitty tabloids.”

“You did it before, Gabe, so don’t blame me for being suspicious.”

Well, alright, Gabriel did fly away _once_ , a year ago, to Brazil. He needed to take a breather, away from Overwatch, and find and fuck someone who wouldn't idolize him like a hero because he was definitely _not_. It was a small trip, barely three days, but Gabriel could understand why Jack was so cautious.

During his escapade, their supervisors and treasurer suspected Jack responsible for the giant hole found in the funds of Overwatch, before Gabriel came back to pay back everything. He remembered the suspension he got –a surprisingly light punishment–, but even more Jack beating him through the sparring mat. Gabriel winced. Shit, he really was an ass. No wonder Jack kept monitoring him.

Jack, not earning an answer from Gabriel, sighed exasperatedly, yet fondly ; something he picked up from Ana. He dropped on his back, taking most of the bench, and gazed up at the sky and its shy stars, studying them, quietly muttering to himself the names of the constellations he recognized. Gabriel smiled. He had noticed, a long time ago, that Jack Morrison was a giant astronomy nerd.

For a moment, they stayed in a comfortable silence. The rest of the sandwich was almost swallowed up whole by a very hungry Gabriel, but suddenly, as it was there to mark the end of the meal, what was apparently the stalker moved again. It was easier to hear him this time, now that most people had cleared out, converging to the mess hall for diner.

Gabriel groaned, burying his head in his palms, and Jack tilted up his head in curiosity. The blonde scanned the surroundings, his enhanced senses letting him find and focus quickly his attention on the stalker, who stood around the bushes. He then swept his eyes back to Gabriel, pensively.

“So he's been following you since that mission ?”

“Yep,” Gabriel said, still in his hands, popping the “p”. He had moved a tiniest bit his face to see Jack between his fingers. “Can't really go to him, he'll spill everything I did during the mission. I... I need to kill him, isn't it, Jack ? I'm going to.”

“Stop being so dramatic. I'll miss you if you get fired,” Jack replied with a touch of sarcasm, rolling his eyes. He knew Gabriel enough to know he was joking, and Gabriel huffed in his hands, pretending to be hurt.

Pushing himself up lazily, Jack grasped Gabriel's wrist. He gently pried them away from his face, and grinned.

“But we can...” he began.

“No,” Gabriel grunted, wrinkling his nose.

Jack had the exact same look as before, the same gaze locked on his lips, and Gabriel had to repress the shiver running up his spine, caused as much by anticipation than lust, both in a myriad of conflicting emotions. He cleared his throat, felt the heat rise up in his cheeks, and Jack chuckled softly. They weren't partners since the soldier enhancement program for nothing, after all ; one look, and they could tell whatever the other was going to do.

“Come on, Gabe. If he thinks you're with someone, he will probably stop following you around like a lovesick puppy, and if he thinks you're with me, he'll _run_.”

“And why would he run ? You're...”

Jack grabbed the front of Gabriel's shirt with enough strength to let Gabriel think, for a split second, that he was going to be punched, but that impression turned into another flash of memories, this time more detailed: heat and sweat, messy hair and groans, honey candies and muffled laughs. Gabriel took a sharp intake of breath, trying to steady himself.

“Because I don't share,” Jack said, voice low, with an intensity rarely seen.

And Gabriel brain ceased to work. It was a stupid idea, it was insane, it wasn't going to do anything, how did they come to this kind of solution ; but...

“Yeah, okay,” he conceded, losing track of his protests. “We can try.”

There was no chaste prelude, this time, only heat and longing and hunger, Jack's hands possessively curling around Gabriel's neck, Gabriel biting into Jack's lower lip ; and yes, yes, _yes_. It was right, it was good, it was exactly what he wanted to do since Madrid and exactly what he imagined when he was kissing that foreign prince with a hand pressed on his erection and fuck. Gabriel was gone, heat sliding lower and pooling around his groin ; and he needed to repress an embarrassingly high pitched groan when Jack, this time, was the one to move his mouth to bite his neck.

“Still around ?” Jack asked, too busy sucking on Gabriel's skin to check.

Mind clouded, Gabriel vaguely registered that they were still outside and a creepy stalker, among others, was probably watching them. He forced himself to sweep a look around. He didn't see anyone. He _knew_ there wasn't anyone ; he would have noticed otherwise.

Still, he muttered, “I'm not sure”, breathless, and Jack hummed contently.

The blonde finally moved from Gabriel's neck, deciding to head down enough to kiss and lick the hole of his throat. Gabriel was pretty sure his moan could be felt on Jack's tongue.

“And now ?” Jack asked again, mouthing a collarbone, thumbs drawing circles on Gabriel's sides.

Gabriel groaned again. He didn't know when, but one of his hand had reached up to the top of Jack's head and was gently encouraging the blonde to go lower, _way_ lower ; and Jack didn't even seem to care. This lapse of control was enough to stir Gabriel's sanity back a bit, though, enough to feel ashamed. He pushed Jack back gently, making him whine at the lost of contact. Gabriel's cock twitched at the sound. He crossed his legs.

When Jack regained his senses, he, like last time, went red all over. But far from the confidence he displayed in Madrid, he was quick to blabber some excuses, eyes cast down. Gabriel didn't tease him. He also wasn't really presentable right now.

Letting out a sharp breath, Gabriel blinked in disbelief at the grass around his feet. They did go too far, this time. He knew it, but he couldn't gather the will to regret it.

Jack cleared his throat.

“Still a terrible kisser ?” he asked, jokingly, but his voice was hoarse and his pupils dilated, by lust or the darkness settling around them, Gabriel didn't really know. Probably both.

“I've seen better, blondie” Gabriel said, and winced when he heard his own voice. He coughed, and glanced around. The stalker was long gone, and they were the only people left in the courtyard. Well. At least the plan worked, didn't it ?

Gabriel pursed his lips. His tongue tasted of honey.

  
  


The stalker apparently took Gabriel's lack of attention quite insulting, because two days later, there was another headline in the tabloids, accompanied by a giant, double paged picture of Gabriel kissing the breath out of Jack. “ **Reyes' charm strikes again !** ” it read.

Fortunately, Overwatch didn't really care about them and their very intense kiss, as having a new couple, real or not, was the perfect distraction to efficiently bury the honeypot mission rumors into oblivion. Gabriel, receiving an umpteenth wink from colleagues, didn't bother to correct them anymore. He just watched, from afar, Jack trying to calm a way too enthusiastic Reinhardt down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will take a bit more time to come because my story gets longer and longer. I find myself wanting to include specific details and flesh out the story a little bit more, even if the plot itself is just an accumulation of clichés (I'm not sorry though, they deserve cute things). But to reassure you all : most of the fic is written. I'm just tweaking and correcting and adding 1500 words every time I read a chapter again lmao.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack is a friend, but everything is weird, Gabriel thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeey, first of all, thank you for your kind comments, your kudos, your bookmarks, EVERYTHING. You are all so awesome and I just ???  
> I'm sorry this chapter took longer than expected, but I wasn't around these past couple of days.
> 
> Also, Icelandic words have a translation ! You just have to hover the word with your mouse.  
> If I forgot to translate some words, tell me :D

It wasn't much of a surprise when Jack announced, with a huge smile, that he had been promoted to the rank of Strike-Commander.

As the good friend he was, Gabriel was happy. Jack was, indeed, really suited for the promotion. He had a strong sense of duty, a perfect smile, knew exactly how to answer the medias, and didn’t suddenly fly away to screw strangers. He was the perfect poster boy the UN could hope for, a real beacon of a brighter future.

But, albeit not alone, Gabriel was one of the veteran soldiers leading humanity to victory against the Omnics. And if Jack was suited to be named Strike-Commander, Gabriel _deserved_ it.

Every time he thought about the unfairness of this situation, he couldn't stop the slow poison of jealousy, bitter in his mouth, from burning his chest.

Gabriel might have been happy as Jack's friend, but as a soldier, he was _angry._ And more the time passed, the less he knew how to act around Jack. He was more pissed at the higher ups for ignoring him than at his friend, but Jack was the reflection of their decision and Gabriel wanted to bash his pretty blonde head against the nearest wall just _because_. If Gabriel wouldn’t prove any point by doing it, he could at least pass his nerves.

The best for the both of them was to ignore each other, Gabriel decided, one day, when he watched with a barely repressed disdain new recruits staring up at Jack with stars in their eyes.

And so he did.

Gabriel took other, longer, paths to slip into his office. He ran through corridors and empty halls to meet Reinhardt. He slipped away when he thought he noticed Jack from the corner of his eyes.

Soon, Gabriel realized his effort weren’t even necessary: they were both extremely busy now. Jack had to deal with the increasing number of meetings he had to attend, the never ending pile of paperwork now occupying a corner of his brand new desk, while still being assigned to missions. Gabriel was soon sent around the world, mostly in remote places where he was a nobody, to deal with a succession of stealth and undercover missions.

Weeks passed without them seeing each other. Weeks turned to months.

 

Gabriel was on an Overwatch plane, flying back to the Zurich headquarters. He had just successfully completed a mission in Cuba and was planning to get some days off to ski in the Alps, when his holo-communicator flickered alive on the table.

It showed in blue hues a woman; another UN bureaucrat commanding Overwatch around, Gabriel guessed as he noticed the badge around her neck. It wasn’t readable, but the logo proudly adorning her chest was clear enough. He saluted the silhouette, repressing a sigh. The woman nodded in acknowledgment.

“At ease, Reyes. And congratulation for shutting down that drug trafficking ring in Cuba,” she said. “I am Resident Coordinator Braun.”

Braun’s voice was authoritative and carried a northern European accent. It reminded Gabriel of his commanding officer, back in the soldier enhancement program –it was that same, clinical appreciation of a well done work. If Braun wasn't wearing her tightly fitted suit but a military uniform, Gabriel would have been convinced that he traveled back in time. It made him nervous.

And Jack wasn't with him.

“Thank you, ma'am,” he finally said with a faint tilt of his head, pushing down his thoughts. He squared his jaw.

The poor connection made the hologram flicker. Braun’s teeth and mouth were deformed, turned into a grimace when she smiled thinly. Gabriel pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes. He knew how these kind of conversation were going to end: the UN rarely contacted anyone to congratulate them. He sighed heavily. He didn’t even try to make it discreet, this time.

Gabriel needed to reschedule his date with The Mont Blanc again, apparently.

“I am well aware your last mission was long and tiring,” Braun said, arms crossed, noticing Gabriel’s weariness. Despite her words, her face showed nothing close to empathy. “Still, I have another important task for you.”

Braun's silhouette dissolved into a blue mess, replaced by a world map. It zoomed on Iceland, then on its capital, Reykjavik. Gabriel didn't see the bureaucrat anymore, but she probably did see him, as she was quick to reassure him when he frowned at the map.

“It has nothing to do with criminals. Iceland is well protected,” she explained. “But it is still quite important. As you know, Reyes, the Omnic war ended in our favor, but the damage worldwide isn't negligible. Quite a lot of foundations and associations have been created to come in aid of victims.”

Logos flickered one after another. Gabriel tried to recognize them, to no avail, and was, for a moment, tempted to let them just slide. But in the end, he still memorized them. It could be useful.

“We have also a branch in our United Nations Foundation dealing with this, of course,” Braun continued, reappearing and replacing the pictures. “But despite the general approbation from the public, we lack funds.”

A grainy photography of a woman, wrapped in a long dress, zoomed in. The hologram only showing blue hues, it was difficult to clearly grasp any details, but Gabriel noted that she was probably in her forties and exuded a lot of elegance. The UN representative let him look for a second, before she gave further explanations.

“Kalla Helgadóttir,” Braun’s voice rose again, “is one of our precious and biggest donor, and she is organizing a ball in her estate in three days. I want you to attend, Reyes.”

Attend the ball? It was far from the bodyguard duty Gabriel expected. It was... confusing.

“I'm sorry ma'am, but I'm not sure if I'm the most suited for these kind of, um, diplomatic missions,” he said cautiously.

The ball itself wasn't exactly a bother for Gabriel. There was always marvelous food and he got to wear expensive suits, but he didn't know why would anyone want him near someone so obviously important to the UN if not to protect her. Gabriel was a disaster, sometimes, when he didn't have to play a role, and Braun probably thought the same, because when she was on screen again, she seemed to refrain herself from wrinkling her nose.

“You are one of the founding members of Overwatch, and also a veteran soldier from the Omnic war. Your presence is highly appreciated –it will prove our engagement toward heavily war impacted countries.”

Great. He was going there to be pretty and make the United Nation look like angels. He would have preferred the bodyguard duty. At least he would have a reason to look grumpy.

“Is Strike-Commander Morrison unavailable?” Gabriel asked as politely as possible, raising an eyebrow and crossing his arms. Isn't the poster boy more fitted for these situations then the gruff, almost forgotten captain?

Braun scoffed.

“Why did you think Morrison wouldn't be there?”

  
  


Gabriel arrived in Reykjavik approximately a day later to find Jack waiting for him at the airport, a luxurious private hire behind. As expected, it was an awkward reunion: Jack offered gingerly a hand to shake; something he didn't do for ages, and Gabriel took it absentmindedly, too exhausted after his flying marathon to find the courage to come up with a friendlier alternative.

They climbed in the car in silence, and Jack was quick to lose himself into some files he brought with him, muttering about “ _clean up_ ” and “ _new recruits_ ”. Gabriel didn't really care, and occupied himself by watching the city passing by the window.

He expected Iceland to be cold and mostly boring, but if the former proved to be true, the latter, not really.

Spring in Iceland was colorful. Green gardens surrounded brightly painted houses, lakes reflected the blue sky, flowers dotted balconies with red, pink and yellow. It was fascinating and beautiful, and Gabriel had to force himself to tear his gaze from the scenery, only to find Jack staring at him, his expression wistful.

“What,” Gabriel said, sniffing disdainfully, and Jack blinked, looking back into his files. “Monitoring me?”

And Jack Morrison _blushed_

“No,” he protested, “I... No.”

It was strange enough to let Gabriel know that something was amiss. He narrowed his eyes, suspicious, and turned his body so he could face Jack as much as he could. He squared up his shoulders and his jaw, trying to pierce through the obvious discomfort Jack was feeling.

“You better stop lying, blondie,” he whispered, leaning closer, “because you're doing a poor job.”

Jack closed his mouth, pursed his lips. His attention was, for a mere moment, on the driver, Juliet. He was probably trying to see if she was eavesdropping and, more importantly, witnessing one of the highest ranked person of Overwatch being criticized by a subordinate. At that thought, Gabriel grinned.

Jack, without any doubt, got used to having everyone bow in front of him these last months.

“So? If you are done staring at our dear driver, can you just explain why am I here if you are here? Because I think, like everyone in the UN, that you're better suited for this job than me,” Gabriel said with a touch of bitterness.

The car turned swiftly to the left, making Gabriel's shoulder collide with Jack's. Juliet was not very subtly looking at them with the rear-view mirror now, apparently quite intrigued by their conversation. Gabriel refrained himself to snicker when Jack threw her a pointed glare and hastily readjusted himself.

“I'll explain at the hotel, it's...” Jack began gruffly, nose wrinkling, “complicated, Gabe.”

Not classified then, just complicated. And Jack still didn't dislike him enough to drop the nickname, Gabriel noted, feeling a bit warm in his chest.

Satisfied, he stopped to prod and looked, through the window, the hotel slowly growing bigger and bigger. Gabriel whistled as he stepped out he car, dodging a doorman hurrying up to take their luggage.

After his undercover mission in Cuba and two flights, a luxury hotel was a welcome sight. He could already imagine himself sinking in a king sized mattress and eating gastronomic dishes with ingredients he never suspected to exist.

Briskly passing through the hall, Gabriel went straight to the reception while pointedly ignoring Jack calling gruffly after him. Yes, he was maybe a little childish, and yes, he acted quite like a jerk since he arrived, but Jack was uncharacteristically easy to frustrate this day and Gabriel wanted to take advantage of it to piss him off.

“Hi,” Gabriel said to the receptionist, squinting at the name tag that spelled Þrúðmar. He tried to read it correctly under his breath, but finally gave up, abandoning friendliness to say, “I, huh, have a room? Under the name Reyes?”

“Wait, Gabe –” Jack's voice resounded behind, only to be cut by the receptionist, whose face brightened. The corner of his lips tugged up in a well-trained, faked, smile.

“Oh, yes, Kalla did mention you and your partner! Here is your key,” he said in a thick accent, ducking to fetch a magnetic card to give it to Gabriel. “Room 702. I hope you both enjoy the view, and the stay of course. We will also bring up some champagne in a short while; complimentary, of course.”

Gabriel stayed a moment frozen in place, the words slowly registering in his mind.

“I think there's an error,” he slowly began, eyes narrowing, “we're not...”

But Jack finally caught up with him, and pulled the key out of his hands hastily.

“It's quite alright, Þrúðmar. _Takk_ ,” the blonde said, flashing his perfect smile, and pushed a still dumbfounded Gabriel in the nearest elevator, following closely behind.

Before the door shut close, Gabriel was pretty sure he saw the receptionist with the unpronounceable name wink. That was enough to shake him back to reality.

“Wait. Did they just …?” he croaked, voice derailing.

Jack sighed. He ran a hand in his hair, rested his palm against his temple, as if he was having a migraine, then said, very carefully, “Kalla didn't get the memo about the, hum, tabloids being wrong.”

“What.”

“I didn't really know how to tell you, I know you like your space...” Jack trailed off, his hands gesturing around. Under any normal circumstances, Gabriel would have laughed, as the elevator music matched the Jack's movement, finishing dramatically on a loud “ding”.

Gabriel stepped out of the elevator, following some sort of automatism, but he didn't budge further than that. He stared at Jack as he opened the door of _their_ room, then said, “Why don't you tell to that Kalla or whatever her name is that she's wrong? I'm pretty sure she is rich enough to pay for another room.”

“She likes the idea of an organization as big as Overwatch being openly supportive of equality. And since I'm the Strike-Commander now, it makes a bigger... statement,” Jack muttered, visibly unsure of the word to use. He entered the suite, Gabriel trailing behind him without a word, making Jack fidget.

After a while, uncomfortable with the silent treatment Gabriel was giving him, Jack added, “Listen, Gabe, if it's too much for you I understand, I'll say it was some old news and—”

Gabriel closed the door, then sighed heavily. It was loud enough to stop Jack's babbling.

“No it's okay, it's just... I mean, I didn't see you for ages, and now that I get to see you, I need to suck your face. For money,” Gabriel said, pacing around, before he finally plopped down on the king sized bed.

Jack chuckled, a small laugh punctuated with snorts. It was inelegant, silly, but it was so... Jack. Gabriel felt a laugh bubble up in his throat too, and soon, both of them were laughing, Jack sitting down beside him to catch his breath more easily; Gabriel giving up on everything and falling flat on his back, eyes screwed shut and shaking in uncontrollable laughter.

How could he try to forget this?

He missed it.

  
  


The ball was exactly how Gabriel thought it would be: indecently rich. But Kalla Helgadóttir was a surprisingly gentle and kind host, offering smiles as sweet as the desserts, and Gabriel felt almost bad for lying to her. He straightened up, and rested gingerly a hand on Jack's back as they watched some guests dance.

Their position was so awkward and obviously forced that Jack sighed and snuggled closer, gripping Gabriel’s hand almost painfully.

“Think of it as a honeypot mission, I don't know,” he hissed, curling Gabriel's left arm around his waist. “But you need to focus, Gabe.”

Gabriel nodded, even though he knew he wouldn't be able to do as the blonde said. Jack was his friend, and yes, maybe they did kiss each other and felt a bit each other up, it didn't change the fact that they weren't lovers and that Jack was also his _commander_ now.

“Jack, Gabriel,” Kalla suddenly said, her fingers tapping her beige dress. “You two don't need to be discreet here.”

For a brief moment, Gabriel wondered what was Kalla talking about. He blinked, stupidly, but fortunately, Jack was able to catch up quickly, flashing a shy smile and pretending to hide his embarrassment in his glass of wine.

“I am not used to _not_ be discreet,” Jack said, and Kalla patted his cheek fondly, muttering something that Gabriel didn't catch. She reminded Gabriel his late grand-mother, adorable and dotting, yet sharp and perceptive. Maybe she picked up their odd behavior? Their physical contact did seem forced, after all.

“Come, Jack. And you too, Gabriel! You two are going to dance,” Kalla decided, her arms crossed. “It is truly a good way to lose all that shyness!”

Gabriel scrunched up his nose, ready to refuse, but Jack swatted his arm. If it seemed to be some fond bickering from an outsider point of view, Gabriel had to bite back a wince. He rubbed his arm, then snaked it around Jack's waist, pinching the skin there in retaliation.

Dancing was not a problem: Gabriel, of course, knew how to –it was a requirement for a long list of undercover missions. He just didn't feel like it; but now Jack was staring at him expectantly, Kalla had an eyebrow raised, judging, and most of the guests were now waiting for them to move.

Gabriel sighed. With his arm still around Jack and a dramatic roll of his eyes, he turned to him. Stepped back once. Jack followed.

Waltzing was easier than Gabriel remembered. He followed the music, and Jack followed him, and soon they were in their own world, looking at each other’s' eyes with a faint smile. They knew every movement the other was going to make before they even thought about it, and suddenly they were back in the training fields of the soldier enhancement program.

They were friends, of course, but learned to read each other way before that, when they were still recruits forced into cooperation. And their dance was just another battlefield where they had to listen and guide each other.

Just better dressed, this time, Gabriel thought with a grin. Jack returned it after they both successfully made another gracious turn.

It went on for some time, until Kalla, along some guests, clapped, seemingly happy to see a well performed dance. But far from disentangling himself from Gabriel, Jack remained in his arms, head resting on his shoulder, both swaying gently. The music faded into something quieter.

“I'm… going to kiss you now,” Gabriel whispered in Jack's hair.

“What?” the blonde replied, face still nestled in the crook of Gabriel's neck. Dessert sweet breath was tickling his skin there. It was distracting.

“Well, it's weird if a couple doesn't kiss after that kind of dance, no? I don’t really know.”

Jack rose his head, and his content features hardened a tiniest bit before he plastered a mask over them, soothing them into cold indifference. Gabriel wondered if he messed up something.

“Ah, yes, you're right,” Jack muttered.

And Gabriel tentatively pressed his lips against his.

The last two kisses were intense and lust filled, quick to turn them into incoherent messes, but this one was different. It was empty, devoid of anything. It felt weird, Gabriel thought, asking himself if he was doing it wrong, before he realized that this impression didn't come from him but Jack.

Jack was rigid, obviously uncomfortable, and in an attempt to ease him, Gabriel reached up with a hand and stroked the back of his head, playfully playing with blonde locks; while the other pressed gently on the small of his back. It seemed to do the trick, because Jack melted, a small exhale passing between his lips, and the kiss was better. Tender. Gabriel found himself smiling, letting Jack's tongue slide briefly against his, before they parted.

There was an unreadable glint in Jack's eyes, and Gabriel was ready to say something without knowing what.

“You two are really cute,” Kalla said, breaking the moment.

Jack smiled, but his eyes were cast down.

"Thank you," he breathed, and the ball went on.

  
  


Kalla sent both of them back to their hotel earlier than expected, assuming it was alcohol making Jack moody.

Upon arriving to their room, Jack crashed into the bed and fell asleep before Gabriel could ask anything. Sighing, he did the same, trying to put as much distance as possible between Jack and himself.

It was three in the morning when Gabriel woke up and found himself unable to sleep.

Jack was snoring softly beside him, curled up so close to the edge of the bed, Gabriel wondered how he didn't fell lamentably. Gabriel snorted.

“Jack,” he said softly, after a while, eyes cast on the window. “Jack?”

The blonde stirred, pushed himself up in alert before he visibly relaxed.

“What the– it's three in the morning, Gabe,” he groaned, his head popping out of a mountain of blankets, trying to look murderous. But his eyes were bleary, his hair messy, and dried up drool was glistening at the right corner of his mouth, and nothing was looking remotely dangerous about him right now.

“Look,” Gabriel said, refraining a snicker and pointing a finger at the window.

Jack narrowed his eyes, annoyed, but did as told.

His jaw went slack.

They weren't very visible from the city, but the green and purple hues, high in the sky, looming over a mountain were definitely northern lights. Jack stared, for a long time, and Gabriel scooted closer to him.

“You're really a nerd,” Gabriel scoffed.

Jack threw him a pillow.

He was smiling again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Iceland, people refer to someone mostly by their first name, that's why the receptionist called Kalla "Kalla", and not "Miss Helgadóttir". (yeah i did some research lmao)  
> ALSO. McCree will appear in the next chapter. I know people love him and his stupid hat and his ridiculous belt (... I do, anyway).
> 
> If you want moar McCree : I have a nice superhero Reaper76 AU idea where he will get a nice role ! Everything is not decided yet BUT YOU CAN ASK ABOUT IT (because i'm so pumped about it tbh). My bro Suchashay gave me this idea and I love him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anger. Anger is so easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yoooo. Thank you again for all your kind comments and all. As always, I apologize for this chapter being VERY late, but I had a reason... Called 6AM-10PM shifts. Urgh.  
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter ! ♥

Most people often wished for a pool of money, a couple of beautiful ladies and gentlemen waiting for them, or a villa too big for a single person. Some people wanted a happy family and a modicum of recognition. Few others would have loved to lighten up their lives with a splash of fame and a better job.

Gabriel, in this exact moment, didn’t want anything remotely close to these mundane demands. Pacing in Jack Morrison’s office, arms thrown up in exasperation, he just wanted his Strike-Commander to stop being a stubborn _pain in the ass_ and listen to him for once.

“No,” Gabriel said for an umpteenth time. “I’m not going to take over… Whatever you want me to take over.”

“Blackwatch, Gabe,” Jack supplied curtly. “ _Blackwatch_.”

“I don’t care. I’m not doing this. Send me shut down a trafficking ring in a Godforsaken hole, Jack, and I will do it. I’ll even let you send me in some honeypot missions with stalkers if you want.  But I’m not going to monitor a bunch of criminals and clean up after you, okay?”

Jack squared his jaw, narrowed his eyes.

“You are going to,” he said, voice steel cold.

It was Jack’s Strike Commander voice, the one that never failed to tick Gabriel off and make him see red. If some were impressed enough to stop talking, it only fueled Gabriel’s anger further more.

“So you’re ordering me around now, huh? Why did you even bother calling me up here into your fucking office to ask me, then?” he gritted out, fury twisting his guts, burning his chest, morphing his features into a snarl. “And don’t pretend you care for my opinion, you don’t care about anything anymore, Jack.”

You don’t care about _me_ anymore, was what Gabriel wanted to say. Instead, he kept the accusation bottled inside.

Jack’s face didn’t betray any emotion, but he was obviously surprised enough to not be able to muster up an answer. He just stared blankly at Gabriel’s face for a while, then sighed, and let his hands push the surface of his desk to help himself up.

Out of his black leather chair, the weight of the world was more noticeable on Jack’s now slouched shoulders. It was heavy enough to leave permanent lines barring his forehead and to pull his lips down in a perpetual frown.

Jack was maybe a couple of years younger than Gabriel; still, he looked way too old, used and jaded by responsibilities thrust upon him.

And Gabriel could be angry –Hell, he _was_ ; itching to argue and fight and slap Jack’s impassive face, but the sight made him worry. He tried to remember the last time he saw Jack genuinely smiling, and only thought of northern lights and shared beds, of thrown pillows and soft laughs.

Everything about their friendship, somewhat rekindled in a hotel room of Reykjavik, felt old and fragile, worn off, cracking. It was a strange and frustrating feeling. Their trip in Iceland wasn’t even _that_ long ago.

What happened to them?

“Gabe,” Jack said, more quietly, “you’re the only one I trust on this. Please, I –”

Gabriel’s features, if softened with genuine worry for a mere moment, was quick to harden again. It was enough to shut Jack up.

Pursing his lips, Gabriel said, slowly, restraining the contempt obvious in his voice, “No, Jack. You’re not trusting me. You’re forcing me to take this job like some sort of consolation price, so you think you’re doing something for me when you’re not.”

Jack blinked. Red was beginning to tint the fair skin of his cheeks, and Gabriel repressed a snort full of disdain. Having someone read into your mind like an open book and lay the unpleasant truth in front of you wasn’t something nice to be subjected to. Gabriel knew he would have punched that person if it ever happened.

He also knew only Jack would be able to do this, as much as Gabriel was the only one capable to pull Jack's hidden thoughts out of his mind with a masterful precision.

“You can’t –” Jack began, stammering a little, only to be interrupted by a snickering Gabriel.

“What, talk to you like that? Tell you the truth? Breaking news, Jack: I don’t give a shit about what you think.”

“Why are you like this, Gabe? I didn’t have any choice then, now that I have one I’m handing out an opportunity to you!”

“You had the choice, Jack,” Gabriel sneered. “And even if you didn’t, it was _you_ who decided to ignore me like I was a pile of shit the second you became Strike-Commander. It was _you_ who only called when you needed me. You’re not giving me anything Jack. You need me to watch your little social experimentation and you know I will do it, because I’m a soldier, not your friend; not anymore anyway. And my opinion doesn’t matter. So quit your 'opportunity' bullshit and don’t talk about choices. Have a bit a respect and don't fucking lie to me. You disgust me.”

The words were maybe too harsh, but the dam restraining his anger broke after months and months of hypocrisy. Now the rage was pouring out, unforgiving, unrelenting, and Jack could only take a shaky intake of breath against the wave of white hot fury.

Gabriel almost apologized as he watched his former best friend cling on the Strike-Commander impassible mask and failing, revealing hurt and confusion under its cracks.

Maybe Jack wasn’t aware of his faults. Maybe he didn’t know how Gabriel was hurt.

Gabriel bit his tongue to refrain himself from feeling bad and stormed off of Jack's office, aware of the blonde's eyes on his back.

If getting his thoughts off his chest made Gabriel feel a little bit better, it also felt a lot worse.

 

 

Blackwatch wasn’t the nightmare Gabriel supposed it was. The recruits, former criminals, were less inclined to listen and were sometimes a bit arrogant, of course, but some of them showed a lot of promise. And despite the rocky beginning, Gabriel, after a while, began to catch some starry eyed glances thrown toward him, and he guessed he could now understand how Jack was feeling –idolized, important.

A kid (“ _I'm eighteen now, boss!_ ”), Jesse McCree, young American obsessed with cowboy hats and ridiculous belts, seemed quite eager to atone for his crimes, even if Gabriel suspected it had more to do with evading years of prison for theft and complicity to murder.

As a former member of the now dismantled Deadlock Gang, Jesse was unsurprisingly impressive with guns, flashing cocky grins when he hit the practice targets spot-on. His joy was lightening up his whole face, and Gabriel wondered for a while how could that seemingly cheery kid could have been a member of the infamous gang.

Jesse was good, Gabriel believed. A brilliant pupil, even if he was sometimes too observant.

In the Overwatch courtyard, taking a lunch break between two training sessions, Jesse confirmed that yes, his perspicacity, coupled with his tendency to be _a nosy little shit_ , could be quite problematic.

 “So,” Jesse said, sprawled on the grass, “you and Morrison were…?”

He made an obscene gesture with his oily fingers.

Gabriel choked on his coffee. Jesse snickered.

 “Friends,” Gabriel said, voice raspy, his lungs still irritated by coffee. “We were friends.”

“Really?” the kid said. He whistled, munching a French fry with gusto. “Like, do you use boss privileges to bypass security and check on every friends you have? Or is it just a Morrison thing?”

“What –”

“No worries, boss, ‘won’t tell a soul. I’m curious, that’s all.”

Gabriel cocked an eyebrow up, hiding his embarrassment by stealing some of Jesse’s meal. Why did he feel like he needed to explain himself to a _kid_? 

“This conversation is… inappropriate,” Gabriel finally huffed. “Eat your fries, before I make you run laps.”

Jesse grinned, held up his hands. “Okay boss, okay, message received loud and clear.”

 

 

The thing was that Gabriel wasn’t using his privilege, as Jesse liked to call it, to spy on Jack. There was something wrong with these new Overwatch recruits. He could feel it in his bones, inexplicably so; a suspicion clinging on his whole being. His hair dressed up, his heartbeat picked up, his palms were clammy. There wasn’t anything close to look like evidence, but Gabriel just had this terrible presentiment, and if years and years of training taught him something, it was to follow his intuition.

He monitored a lot of new faces before he could find something strange: it took the form of a woman in her thirties, silky black hair cut short, striking blue eyes always narrowed, beige parka hugging her tall frame. _Jane Gilmore_ , Gabriel's mind supplied, as he followed her out of the Zurich headquarters, tailing her.

It was way past midnight. The moon wasn’t up in the sky, that night, and its absent light made some alleys darker than Gabriel expected. He scrunched up his nose, pondering if putting on his night vision goggles was a good idea, when a familiar, cocky voice pierced the static of his earpiece.

“Hey boss. You better turn left.”

“Jesse. What are you—Go to bed,” Gabriel spluttered, trying to keep his voice down despite his surprise. Fortunately, Jane didn’t notice him, and continued straight forward, her heels tapping on concrete.

“You’ll have to fill an adoption form before you can tell me when to sleep,” Jesse said, cackling, before he added, in a more serious tone, “so, this Jane, something wrong with her?”

Gabriel clenched his jaw, gritted his teeth, turned left.

Jesse was going to run laps.

A lot of laps.

Still, Gabriel replied.

“Not sure yet. Sneaking out in the middle of the night is quite suspicious, though” he whispered to Jesse, who only hummed thoughtfully.

“Well you’re also kinda out in the middle of the night, boss,” the kid finally pointed out. “And not to, you know, be rude; you’re way creepier than that girl.”

“Shut up.”

“You know I’m right. Aaaaand, left again.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes and did as told. Having Jesse giving indications in his ear was nice. He missed sharing his thoughts and feelings with someone during infiltration tasks, and a flow of memories brought some missions back in his mind.

They were way too often tied with Jack’s presence, though; and Gabriel found himself pouting like a petulant child when he thought about the blonde. Time made them less hostile toward each other, but their friendship had been over for quite some time now, turning them into awkward acquaintances (or “ _bitter exes_ ,” as Jesse liked to say, before he felt an elbow digging painfully in his ribs).

Jesse muttered something intelligible, and Gabriel heard the boy press on some buttons, testing them. By the way he was fumbling with the commands, Jesse had never been a handler. Still, he was quite proficient at it, learning quickly and supplying escape routes long before Gabriel asked for them.

It made a warm feeling bloom in Gabriel’s chest. Pride, he thought. He was proud.

He hid a grin as he continued to tail Jane, his eyes darting around to find any abnormalities, Jesse’s cheery voice giving him useful information from time to time. 

After a while, Gabriel approached an old, abandoned factory, supposedly Jane’s destination. Jesse read with barely concealed skepticsm the name of the building off the map he was eyeing, and muttered something about “ _bad guys with no originality_ ”. Gabriel could imagine the cocked up eyebrow of his pupil and repressed a scoff. Well, Jesse wasn’t exactly wrong; abandoned buildings turned into hideouts weren’t really an original concept.

Gabriel quietly stalked away from the wide opened door of the main entrance, where Jane’s tall frame disappeared, deciding to deftly climb up a wall instead.

The rough edges of its bricks irritated the skin of his palms. Gabriel didn't really care. He wiped the red powder off his hands, right after he jumped down on the dusty floor of the warehouse.

It was dark, enough to not see correctly the surroundings. Why didn’t Jane take out a torch by now?

“Might want to put on your night goggles, boss, I can’t guide you inside creepy old buildings. You okay?” Jesse said, a little tense. “Want me to come over?”

“No need to. Are you worried, kid?” Gabriel whispered back, teasing. He pulled his goggles down on his eyes, and turned them on.

“Well,” Jesse said quietly, vulnerable for a short while, before he recovered and added, humor tainting his voice, “who’s gonna bail me out of jail if you die, boss?”.

Gabriel rolled his eyes, not being able to let out the fond, little laugh bubbling up his throat. He walked around the building carefully. The green hues of his night vision goggles presented him some old, crumbled papers, a disemboweled machine, some empty bottle of beer. Further away, half hidden by a pile of garbage, a broken bicycle. Gabriel silenced a cough, his lungs clogged up by the dirt and the foul smell. He was pretty sure an animal died somewhere around.

He took a couple of steps toward the entrance, trying to hide himself from Jane's probable line of sight behind mountains and piles of rotting cardboard boxes. It was quite useless, Gabriel thought, guts turning cold, when traces of fresh blood adorned the ground.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath. His eyes darted everywhere, seeking the victim or the perpetrator, his fingers flying to his ear piece. He barked, “Jesse, call Jack. Now. Emergency. Factory by the lake.”

There was a lot of commotion from the other side of the communication link. Jesse running to get the Strike-Commander, without any doubt. Gabriel bit his lower lip and decided to follow the blood, a trail of dark green with the night vision on. A hand pulling out a gun from his harness, he made an abrupt turn.

No one. He took a deep breath and a cautious step, weapon raised high enough to aim quickly at the head of an average adult. 

One step. Turn. Two steps. Turn.

Still nothing.

Gabriel reached another corner, swung sharply right, toward the entryway Jane used, and screwed his eyes shut, cursing. He lowered his gun.

Jane was sprawled on the dusty floor, mouth opened in a silent scream, a rusty pipe piercing through her chest. The blood had already soaked her civilian clothes. It was staining her parka, making the beige turn red, and Gabriel was glad to have put on his night vision goggles, turning the normally crimson puddle into a splash of dark green. He was familiar with the sight of blood, of course, and had seen a fair amount of corpses with the Omnic crisis; still, it wasn't really something he liked to see.

Dead, Gabriel thought with a sigh, crouching beside the body. Jane was dead. Killed. By whom? Maybe the culprit was still around. Shit. Shit, shit, _shit_.

He pressed two fingers below her jaw. A weak pulse jumped beneath them, fluttering and irregular, weakening too quickly. She wasn't dead yet, but Gabriel knew it was already too late nonetheless. He didn’t have time to call for anyone; Jesse had apparently abandoned his ear piece to find Jack, and Angela Ziegler, newly appointed head of medical research and miracle doer, was out covering a mission in Canada.

Nobody knew about his investigation except for Jesse, and an Overwatch agent was now dying.

Gabriel still tried to help. He couldn’t press on the wound and stop the bleeding, couldn’t tear the metal from her chest; he wasn’t able to save her. 

So he gripped Jane’s hand, trying to offer comfort, reassurance. _Death is not the end,_ he tried to say quietly, _it’s okay_ ; but he couldn’t find the right words. As the head of Blackwatch, Gabriel was sent to kill and not to save. He was not Jack Morrison, not a hero, and his compassionate side had been slowly disappearing, replaced by indifference and never ending anger. 

Jane didn’t budge, didn’t make any sign of acknowledgement. She was slipping away, and Gabriel could only watch, gripping tighter, powerless, as life bled out of her body.

It was quick, just a couple of seconds, really, before Jane’s heart stopped. It still felt like an eternity. Gabriel sighed. Maybe he was right about Jane. Maybe she was doing something against Overwatch. Or maybe not. There was no evidence, only doubt.

When Gabriel stood up, he steeled himself, searching for any clues.

He was a soldier. He was the head of Blackwatch. He needed to be quick and efficient.

Gabriel looked around the body, keeping a cautious stance. He scanned the murder weapon, tried to reconstruct the scene, until he heard someone step behind him.

As a trained soldier, Gabriel was quick to react. His fingers tightening once again around his gun, he turned and aimed at the silhouette in front of him, right in the chest.

“Reyes, isn’t it?” the stranger said, standing in front of the open door.

The night vision goggles, with the glare of the street lamps outside, only gave Gabriel a grainy image of a man with a face hidden by a hood. The backlight didn't make his sight clear enough to pick up any distinctive sign, Gabriel realized, frustrated, and he couldn’t reach safely for his goggles when that man, probably a murderer, was in front of him. Still, he needed information, he needed to do something while Jack was coming. Questions. Distractions.

“Waiting for the beloved Strike-Commander Morrison, isn’t it?” the man said, seeing through Gabriel's thoughts with a soft laugh.

Gabriel gritted his teeth, any plan he mustered up disappearing as soon as Jack’s name was heard. He didn’t reply. He wanted to shoot. The man didn't give any reason to, though; he was just talking, disturbingly serene despite the bloody corpse on the ground.

“Ah,” the man said, tilting his head, looking up “feel free to take a shoot at me.”

Gabriel’s hands tightened around his gun, watching, tense, as the man glanced back down.

“I'm not sure if you'll be able to,” he added, voice full of mirth, stepping nonchalantly away.

For a mere moment, Gabriel was confused. Why did that stranger think he wouldn't shoot? He was a suspect, leaving a crime scene, and Gabriel had his gun ready to fire.

And then, Gabriel understood.

Deafening creaks of metal and plaster reached his ears, followed by the roar of an explosion upstairs.

Gabriel snapped his head up, eyes wide, and tried to reach the door when he realized everything was crumbling down on him. A brick fell, almost hitting his head, ultimately only breaking his goggles. The door was still opened, though, making Gabriel still able to see the exit; the sole source of light in this chaos.

He grunted, reached out, trying to run toward it, breathless and his whole body fully moving on adrenaline. The door was shut close before he could reach it, plunging Gabriel, along with the collapsing building, in the dark.

Although Gabriel wasn’t afraid of the darkness, the unknown was a source of anxiety. He blinked around, trying to reorient himself under the faint light coming from the sky, visible from the ruined ceiling; chunk of plaster cracking all around him. He pushed, prodded, winced when the metallic structure of the building, above him, groaned, and something fell.

It pieced Gabriel’s left arm, immobilizing him with sharp pain, and he swore, trying to free himself. Blinking the dust and the sweat away from his eyes, he realized that the brick didn’t only broke his goggles, but also hit his head, as a supposed bead of sweat left a coppery taste on his lips.

Gabriel tried to move again, only to find out that he wasn't able to. He still writhed, until his breath was cut short by a block of bricks falling onto him, trapping him under. Sharp, rusty pipes were uncomfortably close to his face. Gabriel stopped moving. Powerless once again, he only let out a frustrated scream.

He needed to think. Everything was suffocating, painful. His eyes were heavy and burning with the dust, he felt cold from the loss of blood, and the world was spinning. It was nauseating and exhausting and so, so scary.

It’s going to make Jack so angry, Gabriel thought with a bitter laugh, before he slid into darkness.  

 

 

Gabriel was hurting everywhere, from his broken limbs to his crushed chest to his oversensitive ears, assaulted by the deafening, monotonous beeping of some machine nearby. Pumped full on drugs, smelling nothing else but ether, he only regained enough of his senses to notice a blurry blonde mop of hair on his side. Gabriel stifled a chuckle, half because laughing would probably make him die in pain, half because he didn't want to wake Jack up.

He considered moving his uninjured hand to caress the blonde curls; and then changed his mind, preferring to stay in the comfortable silence.

Gabriel was alive. In pain, a multitude of bones broken but _alive_. He thought about the eerie man that made a whole building collapse on him, about Jane's death; a tiring blur of dust and blood and death, and he didn't have the strength to do anything else but sleep again.

Closing his eyes, Gabriel relaxed his whole body. While ready to fall back into the warm and reassuring unconsciousness, the door, opening slowly, tore him away from the rest he was hoping for. Jack, beside him, moved. The bed dipped briefly, probably the blonde hastily pushing himself up. 

“You… should rest,” said a timid voice. Jesse's?

Gabriel guessed the boy was talking to him, but Jack was the one who replied.

“I don't see how it is your concern, agent. I…”

Jack trailed off. His steps resounded in the mostly empty room, and a heavy sigh joined the regular stomp of boots against linoleum. Jack was pacing.

“Later. I will rest later,” he finally said, softer, gentler. His voice was cracking with disuse, rough around each syllable.

Jesse was, despite his usual cockiness, quite compassionate sometimes. He just replied with an equally soft voice, “of course, Commander,” and Gabriel heard the door open again and shut close.

The silence fell again. Gabriel pretended to be asleep, wondering if Jack's enhanced senses could pick up the way his breathing pattern changed. The blonde didn't say anything, though, and Gabriel thought maybe Jack's obvious tiredness took a toll on his abilities, dulling them.

Gabriel repressed a snort when the bed dipped again. Was Jack seriously considering to rest here again, on his hospital bed? With him? But then, Gabriel felt the blonde looming over him and an insistent gaze on his face.

“Stop pretending, Gabe,” Jack whispered.

Gabriel grinned, fluttering his eyes open. He reoriented himself, noticed he was in an Overwatch facility and not in a regular hospital. He should have known; the bed was way too comfortable.

The unfortunately familiar sight of the clinic ceiling was blocked by Jack's face, bathed by the dim light of the sun. Late afternoon? Early morning? Gabriel tried to guess, move, with no avail. He couldn't turn his head to glance through the window, his neck being cast in a rigid surgical collar. Jack was already quite a distracting sight, anyway.

“Thought you didn't notice,” Gabriel rasped after a beat, staring straight at the blonde’s face.

Jack snorted.

“I didn't. This” –he threw a look at the beeping machine beside them— “did”.

The machine replied with more active beeps, matching Gabriel’s pulse. Jack wrinkled his nose, as if he was bitter to have been bested by a machine and Gabriel barked out a laugh, only to wince when he felt his ribs reminding him of his injuries. Jack rolled his eyes and gave the other man a small glass of water.

“How long?” Gabriel asked after a gulp.

“Three days,” Jack replied.

Gabriel grinned, and patted his bandaged belly through the flowery, ugly gown. “Really?” he said, “Got to thank these enhancements. I was… Pretty fucked up.” 

The amusement wasn’t shared. Jack readjusted himself, putting some distance between Gabriel and himself, enough to let Gabriel feel that cold, invisible wall building up again; but not enough so he could stay within Gabriel's reach if anything had to happen. The blonde looked away and cleared his throat, a sign that he was refraining himself from saying something. 

Gabriel stared expectantly.

Jack sighed.

“Your agent, James—” he began.

“Jesse,” Gabriel corrected with a glare. Jack scrunched up his nose.

“Erm, yes. He told me what happened, _Jesse_ ” he spat the name as if it was an insult. Gabriel felt his blood boil. Nobody, and certainly _not_ Jack Morrison, had the right to despise Blackwatch agents.

Gabriel squirmed on his bed, pushing himself up. It was incredible how Jack could piss him off in a handful of seconds lately, but Gabriel, still tired, didn’t want to argue _again_ ; and so he decided to debrief. Falling into another drugs induced sleep will make him forget important details.

But before Gabriel could say anything, his ears picked up the screeching wheels of a nurse’s trolley. Jack seemed to have heard it too, because he turned sharply toward the door, eyes narrowed.

“Jack,” Gabriel said, tense, and Jack frowned, curious, approaching the wounded man’s bed.

Gabriel grabbed the base of Jack’s shirt and tugged.

Surprise let Jack being pulled down and stumble, flush against Gabriel chest. It hurt like Hell, and Gabriel’s body was protesting, but the surprise on Jack’s face was priceless; and the way he let out a little, startled moan when Gabriel pressed his lips on his was worth it.

Jack tasted like coffee and mint and too much sugar, and Gabriel wondered, self-conscious, if three days of unconsciousness made him smell like death, but Jack didn’t seem to care. One of his hand gripped Gabriel’s tunic as if his life depended on it, the other caressing the wounded left arm, ghosting over the IV and gently covering the still tender scar. 

It was warm and intimate, felt like a “ _I missed you_ ”. And Gabriel ached, a pain lodged deep in his chest, beneath his mending, protesting ribs, and before he could dwell on it, the door flew open and a gasp resounded, ridiculously weak under Jack’s desperate little moans.

“I didn’t know, I… I’m so sorry.”

The nurse fled, leaving her trolley in the room, and Gabriel gently pushed Jack away.

The blonde was blushing, eyes half lidded and pupil blown, but his face was closed up, rigid and severe.

“What was that for?” Jack gritted, the anger in his voice diluted by lust. 

“Jesse probably told you something is wrong with Overwatch agents,” Gabriel explained, shrugging away the heat coiling in his belly and the voice chanting _wrong, wrong, wrong_ in his mind. “Figured it was better to not trust the medical staff too. And yeah, remember when you told me people were too uncomfortable to spy on couples making out and shit?”

Jack visibly tensed, clenching his teeth. He wiped with the back of his hand his mouth, as if he was disgusted. Gabriel didn’t know if he had the right to feel offended; after all, he did force a kiss on his Commander, and there were at least fifteen rules against that, from insubordination to sexual harassment. 

“Stop using me,” Jack said.

Gabriel couldn’t contain his disdainful snort.

“You seemed quite eager to use me before,” he retorted.

Jack stopped. Blanched.

“It was different,” he breathed.

“Why? Because you weren’t Strike-Commander? And now you can’t be seen with the lowly, dirty, Blackwatch agents? You don’t even know my agents’ name! Name of people dying for you!”

“Stop making everything about you or Blackwatch, Gabe. I’m just asking you to not use me as some sort of... Of…” 

Something broke in Jack. It was maybe his own dam, the same that Gabriel had to hold his constant anger and frustration. In Jack, it wasn’t the same, as the words pouring out were hurt and broken and ugly, and Gabriel could just stare, dumbly, as Jack’s struggled with words.

In the end, he didn’t say anything. He stood upright, like a soldier saluting, and stormed off.

Gabriel wondered if Jack hurt that much when he was the one leaving, last time, when they were both in the cold, steel walled office.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whispers* your gay ass is showing, gabe  
> btw, I'm always on tumblr if you wanna talk : roboticake.tumblr.com  
> (i love you all, and you can ask for drabbles !!!)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel and Jack didn't agree, but they trusted each other with their life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all: sorry for the delay. I've been trapped in University Hell(tm). But I've made a 9000 words chapter as a peace offering! So yeah don't hate/eat/stone me. Please?
> 
> Also, I updated the tags, so be careful. There's no graphic description (I think), but I don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable. If you want anything tagged (or see any grammatical errors), please tell me! I won't take it negatively.

 

 

Knuckles of his right hand tainted with blood, throbbing with the force of his last punch, Gabriel cocked his head to a side, sweeping his eyes on the prisoner sat in front of him. The man’s cheek was swollen, the skin split open by silver rings, his right eye beginning to take a light purplish color.

“You can’t do this,” he said. He threw glances everywhere in the small room to find an escape. Handcuffs rattling against the steel of his chair, he sobbed. “You can’t –y-you, no—!”

‘ _You can’t’_ , ‘ _no_ ’, ‘ _don’t_ ’. Gabriel had heard these words from a lot of people, he thought, fist striking down, _again_. Jack Morrison was the first one to say them, a hand gripping firmly his, blue eyes burning with fury. Soon, as rumors of his methods spread, the agents of Overwatch mirrored Jack’s disapproval, and even some of Blackwatch rose a disgusted eyebrow at him, now, when they thought he wasn’t watching.

But what could a sole man do, really? Gabriel had learned a long time ago that sometimes, pretty deals and polite inquiries didn’t work, or at least, took too much time to. Information, sometimes, had to be torn away from someone with threats and pain. And if he had to beat, to bleed and to break a single person to save hundreds of thousands, he would gladly dirty his hands for that.

The prisoner’s head hung low, blood dripping from his broken nose, from his parted lips. Unconscious, _again_ , Gabriel noted with a huff. He picked up a towel, wiped his right hand clean and put his leather gloves on. The next time Gabriel will take them off, the skin of his hand will be clean and unmarred, the bruises vanished and turned into long healed scars.

He left the frighteningly small interrogation room and its buzzing, blinding, lights on, and found himself facing a very distraught Jesse McCree behind the heavy door.

From the cocky kid with a tumultuous past, Jesse had grown up to be a brave and inherently good man; forged into an agent that fitted more Overwatch than Blackwatch. He was the embodiment of what Gabriel let go: bright, shining trust in human nature and justice. It was almost ridiculously naïve how Jesse thought a cause could be entirely just, and how ethics was needed in a job as disgusting as theirs.

 _Ethics_ , Gabriel muttered to himself bitterly, was overrated. _Ethics_ didn’t save people.

“Howdy, boss,” Jesse said, pulling Gabriel out of his musings. “Morrison would like a word.”

The gunslinger’s voice had been roughened up by cigar smoke and cheap alcohol over the years, and had taken a cautious edge his younger self didn’t have. Gabriel couldn’t pinpoint if it came from the dozens of infiltrations Jesse had to do alone, or if it was caused by that nervousness most of the agents shared when they had to talk to him.

After all, a lot have changed, during these last years.

Jesse wasn’t Gabriel’s trainee anymore, but a full-fledged agent, taking undercover missions by himself, here and there. When he had some spare time, he also played handler for Gabriel, a parody of how they used to be; close and trusting. More often than not, though, it finished with blood and broken bones, and Jesse’s uncomfortable look.

These missions slowly drove Jesse away from Gabriel. Even if they somehow managed to maintain a sort of friendship, their professional relationship soured; which wasn’t that surprising: Gabriel kept barricading himself from others, being defensive whenever his methods were brought up.

It didn’t make socializing easy, but Gabriel never claimed to be a people person, anyway. Moreover, he needed time and peace to deal with his never-ending nightmares.

If Gabriel deemed his methods needed, it didn’t mean he wanted them. Sure, there was this satisfying feeling of domination coursing through his veins when he knew he had the power to break down someone with a well-aimed fist; but every time he closed his eyes, Gabriel kept remembering the people he hurt, knowingly or not. Prisoners he bruised to find hostages. Children he left to die, so he could save a whole building under attack. Collateral damage he could have prevented, maybe. _Maybe_. He was never sure if what he did mattered, in the end. It was terrifying.

Sometimes, in his dreams, Jack even snarled reproaches and emitted doubts, arms crossed and mouth a thin line.

‘ _You could have helped’_ ; ‘ _why didn’t you save them?_ ’; ‘ _Why would you do this?_ ’.

In their line of work, nothing could be pretty or heroic. In a way, Gabriel was sure of it, but facing Jack’s harsh accusations, even if it wasn’t real, was heartbreaking.

They were best friends, _once_. They were partners, _before_.

And Gabriel could deal with agents eyeing him like a monster; he could deal with the protests, but Jack… Jack was another story. With a glare and a squared jaw, he could make Gabriel feel utterly worthless and miserable.

Gabriel shouldn’t even care. They were barely acquaintances now. Interacting only now and then to debrief and reports, neither of them were trying to mend their past friendship.

It didn’t exactly get worse than before. They didn’t hate each other; Jack was just too busy to care about anything else beyond UN meetings and press conferences, and Gabriel was too focused with assassination plots and worldwide safety to make relationships a priority.

Despite their indifference towards each other, there was, in Gabriel, this need to be approved, this need of acknowledgement he hated. It was as if Jack was still his only friend, the only person that mattered. It was, maybe, in a certain way. Gabriel tended to stay emotionally attached to people he once cared about, even if he knew it was a foolish thing.

He ground his teeth, and finally replied with a curt “Fine, thanks”. He almost forgot that Jesse was waiting for an answer.

Gabriel turned sharply away from his former trainee, stomping in the corridor leading to the main building. He merely took a couple of steps when Jesse caught up with him and rested a hesitant hand on his shoulder. The touch was light and cautious, like petting a wild animal. Gabriel whirled back with an icy scowl.

“Wait, boss, I…” Jesse began, retreating his hand hastily. “There’s something else.”

Unable to form a correct sentence, Jesse cleared his throat, smoothed his facial hair with a hand. He shot a look on the door of the interrogation room before he tried again, his features hard, his voice still a little bit hesitant, but a lot steadier.

“I ... Need to _go_.”

Gabriel knew it was a euphemism. It meant _leaving,_ _quitting_ ; and somewhere deep in his mind, he knew that it would eventually happen. He still asked “why”, though, stripping his face, his tone, his voice, of any emotion. He wasn’t hurt, not exactly, but there was this affection lingering in his chest screaming “ _betrayal_ ” and “ _abandon_ ”.

After all, Gabriel had spent years raising the ecstatic kid Jesse used to be. His attachment was something hard to ignore; even less these times, where everyone liked to question every move he made.

“You won’t really like it,” Jesse muttered under his breath, a hand patting the top of his head, covered by his trademark cowboy hat. He tugged on its rim absentmindedly, gathering courage. “I just… I’m not sayin’ you’re doin’ shit, boss. But I’m not sure I can follow you where you go. I’m sorry.”

Crossing his arms, Gabriel didn’t reply. He knew what path Jesse was referring to; a path punctuated by violence, blood, and torture, worse than what Overwatch ever treaded on –the higher ups wouldn’t have created Blackwatch, otherwise.

Except for a few Blackwatch agents, a lot of them feared to become another ruthless, mindless, officer and Gabriel tried to ignore it –he didn’t need to explain himself to them. But Jesse was a friend, his former protégé, and when the anger subsided, he only sighed, defeated. He didn’t try to convince Jesse to stay.

Jesse, after all, deserved better than Blackwatch. He fought to be someone worth saving, someone good, and Gabriel was just pulling him down in a life no better than the one he had in the Deadlock Gang. Of course, Gabriel could always say the stakes were different this time, that they were, by hurting a handful of people, saving hundreds; but it still didn’t make it right. It was never right.

The silence made Jesse even more uneasy. He probably mistook the heavy sigh for the prelude of an angry storm.

“Listen, boss, I… I can’t do this,” the gunslinger said, fidgeting, and losing his bravado. He looked down. Hat taken off, he twirled it in his hands.

Gabriel studied Jesse’s face wistfully.

“Go, kid,” he finally muttered under his breath, softly.

Jesse blinked up in surprise, eyes focused on Gabriel’s, trying to find out if it was some sort of cruel joke. He didn’t find a lie, and Gabriel waved a hand, snapping Jesse out of his incredulity, shooing him away.

“Quick, before I change my mind and make you run laps,” he added tiredly with another sigh.

“I…,” the younger agent fumbled with words, then shut his mouth.

For a moment, Jesse didn’t say anything, clearly pondering which words were suited for a good bye; maybe a farewell –they both knew the danger their work involved. After a long silence, Jesse stood upright, in a salute he never bothered to do before. It made Gabriel scrunch up his nose, but he was smiling nonetheless, amused.

“Thank you,” Jesse said, chin high, chest puffed. “It has been an honor.”

Gabriel grinned, played along.

“Yeah, yeah. Dismissed, agent,” he drawled, pushing himself away from the wall he was leaned against.

Jesse tilted his head. He dropped his formal stance. When he smiled, Gabriel could see how the corner of his eyes crinkled.

Their exchange was light, tainted by humor, but the bare respect and honesty laying under Jesse’s voice was disconcerting. Gabriel hid his surprise by crossing his arms. He was feared. Disliked. He wasn’t supposed to be _respected._

“I always wanted to say that,” Jesse cackled. Suddenly he was eighteen again, a kid too young to be a black-ops agent, sharing lunch and trading punches with Gabriel in the courtyard, yelling about wanting a white mare and a rifle. “But y’know. Appearances.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes.

“Go away,” he said.

 Jesse dipped his head in a final goodbye, and sashayed away, twirling his revolver in his hand.

“Agent,” Gabriel called suddenly, a thought crossing his mind, and his former trainee turned sharply back, in alert. This time, Gabriel was the one who didn’t know what to say. He tried out a tentative “Take care.”

Jesse just nodded, earnest, his features soft and open. He winked, grinning, and his free hand mimicked a gun. It was ridiculous and overdramatic. It suited him.

“Y’know you can call, you old sap,” Jesse teased, his playful tone lost somehow in the roar of the wind. Gabriel rolled his eyes again. “But y’know I won’t leave now. ‘Have to help Genji with his crazy ninja brother back in Japan.”

After that last information, Jesse disappeared behind a corner.

Gabriel felt suddenly relieved.

Amidst broken bones, terrified screams and bleeding wounds, Gabriel realized that he still managed to do something good. He let Jesse lead a good life, far from the violence of Blackwatch, away from Overwatch’s machinations. That didn’t mean that Gabriel didn’t feel sad and above anything else, lonely; but it was the best he could do for someone he cared about. To let go when he could.

The looming presence of the interrogation room’s heavy door was still here, behind Gabriel, but, as he climbed the stairs to Jack’s office, Gabriel felt less trapped in the inevitability of violence. Maybe one day, he would be able to let go too. But not now. Overwatch and Blackwatch needed him. People needed him. _Jack_ needed him. If not as a friend, as an officer.

Gabriel entered Jack’s office, not bothering to knock, as always.

“Commander,” Gabriel greeted curtly. “Agent McCree said you wanted to see me.”

He waited a second, then added, shrugging, “and decided to resign.”

Jack didn’t acknowledge him, at first. Tense, back facing Gabriel, his eyes were looking through the window, down on the small yet noisy crowd gathered in front of the gates. People protesting. People asking for Overwatch’s disappearance. _Ungrateful little shits_ , Gabriel liked to call them, but refrained to, chewing his lower lip.

As if he heard Gabriel’s inner thoughts, Jack finally turned to face him with a heavy sigh and a half-hearted glare, the dark circles around his dulled eyes even more apparent than last time they had to meet. He, like Gabriel, obviously didn’t sleep much.

“Gab—Captain,” Jack said, wincing at the slip of the tongue. Gabriel didn’t point it out. “I do hope agent McCree finds a path that suits him better.”

Gabriel sniffed. He wanted to mock Jack’s hypocrisy.

Jack never cared for anyone in Blackwatch. He just ran around prettily, answered questions, attended meaningless events with faked smiles; while Gabriel’s men and women died, never acknowledged and respected, quickly forgotten and their death swept under the rug. But Gabriel knew better than start another fight with _Strike-Commander Morrison_ over the importance of Blackwatch. So he waited, as always, hands clasped behind his back.

 “I can’t shield you anymore, not from _them_ ,” the blonde continued softly, carefully digging up a conversation they already had a thousand times. Gabriel instantly knew that “ _them_ ” wasn’t referring to the angry crowd outside, no. It was higher, more important, more threatening. “I know you deem your actions needed, but I can’t—”

 “Jack, you also know it’s needed,” Gabriel interjected stiffly, shaking his head. “We wouldn’t have saved Hanamura and Dorado from that God Program, otherwise. Not to mention the coup in Numbani and Talon activities in...”

In Egypt, where Ana died, shot through her eye by another sniper. A death that only served to fuel Gabriel’s drive. He needed to keep the others safe. He needed to keep _everyone_ safe; as Jack, far from the soldier he used to be, became Overwatch’s spokesman, a _politician_. Commander solely in name, Jack couldn't protect anyone anymore; or not properly, at any rate. He turned soft and dependent of the world's opinion when Gabriel, hidden in the shadows, wasn't.

“I know,” Jack conceded under his breath. The wrinkles marring his forehead deepened with hurt and regret. “But it’s just a matter of time before they arrest us.”

“Not _us_ , Jack. _Me_. You’re a fucking icon. I’m just some old, forgotten captain. Nobody will care,” Gabriel scoffed, bitter, waving his hand dismissively.

Jack sighed again. He massaged his temples, and passed by the Blackwatch captain in a couple of stiff strides. Settling himself on the sofa behind Gabriel, Jack picked up the expensive crystal bottle on the coffee table, and poured himself a generous amount of bourbon, discarding all pretense of professionalism.

And Gabriel, again, didn’t say anything, even as an icy feeling settled in his guts.

Jack was drinking a lot, lately.

It wasn’t like they could get drunk easily, he reassured himself. Their enhanced metabolism flushed away any drop of alcohol as soon as it got into their body, anyway. It was sometimes nice for missions, but it was mostly frustrating, as the two of them were condemned to be ground to earth by their hypersensitive senses, unable to escape their worries like any regular person.

Hell. Gabriel missed being _normal_.

After standing for a while, the silence stretching between them only cut by the loud gulps coming from Jack downing his glass of alcohol, Gabriel joined the blonde. He let himself fall onto the furniture in an inelegant heap of black and grey fabric. If Jack was forgetting about professionalism, Gabriel didn’t really care about it.

Still, he didn’t drink. Jack drank enough for the both of them, anyway.

“Jesus. Calm the fuck down,” Gabriel breathed, when he witnessed Jack with a third glass. It was worrying.

“I’m going public with Blackwatch before they get any solid evidences,” Jack said suddenly, ignoring Gabriel’s remark, as if it was the best idea he got since he got promoted to Strike-Commander. “Next Wednesday. Press conference.”

Gabriel stopped dead in his tracks. “What— Tell me you’re fucking drunk, or I’ll punch some sense in you,” he hissed, startled.

“Punch,” Jack repeated, a little stupidly. He laughed, weak and hollow. “You just know how to punch, don’t you?”

There wasn’t any heat in Jack’s word. As most of their conversations, nowadays, they went through this one repeatedly for years now, and weariness had replaced anger a long time ago. It didn’t stop Gabriel from building up a wall around him, though. He always had been quick to be on the defensive whenever Jack was involved.

“I just need time, Jack. There’s something wrong with—” Gabriel began to explain, only to be cut by the blonde.

“It’s been _years_ and nothing happened. Jane was probably just investigating some stuff about the gangs nearby and was unlucky enough to meet a psychopath. The investigation _I_ led didn’t get us anything except higher ups breathing down _my_ neck.”

“That man knew my name and yours. They knew who we were. They probably knew about Blackwatch when even some of Overwatch didn’t know. He dropped a _whole building_ on my face because I found out something.”

“You keep saying ‘ _probably’_ , ‘ _maybe’_. Do you even realize you’re hurting people on mere assumptions? I don’t even know who is the man you captured this morning or why you’re detaining him. And I swear to God if it wasn’t already too late for me, I would have arrested you myself right now.”

Gabriel stopped. Blinked. His growing rage came to a dead stop as he realized the words Jack used. “Wait,” he said, slowly. “What are you talking about? Too late? For you?”

“I’m going public, Gabe.” Jack repeated, slowly. “What do you think will happen?”

Gabriel still didn’t understand. He didn’t _want_ to.

After a beat, Jack added, tiredly, “Don’t worry, I’m saying it’s my fault. All you did. Overwatch will take a blow, and I need you to rebuild.”

“Wait. What. How exactly would I manage that? Use your brain,” Gabriel gritted.

“No, _you_ use your brain. I say it’s my fault, and all of you are victims. All of you were ordered to do some terrible shit; Christ, I can even create some blackmail material if you need some. But if it’s you? I’ll be the blind commander that nobody can trust because he was unable—no, worse, _didn’t_ want to connect the dots and take measures. We’ll all be guilty, nobody will trust me and what’s the point in both of us d—...”

The last word didn’t come out. Jack chocked on it, shutting his eyes tightly, balling his fists. In the end, he only said, “You need to understand.”

Gabriel did. It didn’t mean he had to accept it.

Jack let out a bitter laugh, loud and broken.

“Why do you care, anyway? You’ll get Overwatch, you’ll be alive,” he said, looking away. “Besides, if I play my cards well, I can convince them to sentence me to life imprisonment instead. Something you can’t.”

And suddenly the anger came back, hot and burning and it wasn’t only because Jack was so… Eager, to throw his life away. They weren’t exactly the ‘ _good guys_ ’ here, as Jack liked to point out jokingly sometimes, but…

“Your life’s worth more than Overwatch,” Gabriel hissed. “You’re important. You matter.”

He bit back the “ _to me_ ” almost tumbling out his mouth, so genuine and so unexpected, that Gabriel almost surprised himself. Shit. _Shit_. He knew he still cared for Jack, despite the distance and the time, despite the punches they almost traded and their heated arguments; but he didn’t expect that sudden burst of emotions. It wasn’t like him.

But the blonde’s presence was the only thing constant in Gabriel’s life, always by his side; of course he was important to him. But Gabriel didn’t know he would so easily give up his own life for him.

Jack snorted, the sound making Gabriel almost jump out of his skin. He was now analyzing the horrendous painting he kept beside his desk with an almost clinical appreciation. Gabriel, having known Jack for quite some time, knew the blonde was embarrassed by the honesty dripping from his last words. Hell, even Gabriel himself wanted to dig his own grave and disappear from the face of the Earth.

“You’re an idiot, Reyes,” Jack said quietly.

“Yeah, thanks, you’re doing a fine job reminding me that every fucking day, Morrison,” Gabriel breathed out.

They stayed in silence again. Jack, after a while, took another bottle, pouring what seemed to be a stronger alcohol in his glass; although this time, Gabriel put a hand on his wrist, preventing him from drinking. Jack cocked up an eyebrow. He didn’t resist, though, putting dutifully the container back on the coffee table, and letting his attention return on the painting. After a moment, he looked out through the window, blue eyes on the bright sky.

It was annoyingly sunny for a shitty day, Gabriel thought.

“You sure about your plan?” he finally asked, shoulders drawn up in a tense line.

Jack swept his eyes back to Gabriel, scrutinizing his face, studying his features. Self-conscious, Gabriel tugged on his beanie, averted his gaze. He felt trapped by the drilling stare Jack was directing at him, and tried to escape it by taking and drinking, in one gulp, Jack’s abandoned glass on the coffee table. The burn of the alcohol was a welcome distraction.

“People are already protesting against Overwatch, and they don’t even know half of what Blackwatch did” Jack said. “And evidences are beginning to show up everywhere.” He paused, watched Gabriel drink, then added, softly, “The Omnic crisis is gone. They don’t need us anymore. And… I need to do something good. For you, at least.”

Gabriel pursed his lips, uncomfortable with Jack’s intense stare. The blonde had always been someone terribly honest.

“You don’t need to,” Gabriel muttered, scratching his chin. “I mean, doing something good. You're doing plenty of good already.”

“I never thought I'll see you say this,” Jack mused, scoffing. “I just… Listen. I'm aware of my faults. I just signed papers, pretended to scold you, and closed my eyes when you… You did what you did. We don’t agree at all, but you do something when I don't. It’s not right, of course, and I hope you don't-”

“I know what I'm doing is wrong, if it's what you want to ask,” Gabriel cut sharply.

“And that's why I don't wan- I _can't_ let you take the blame,” Jack admitted, correcting himself, blushing a little. Then, as if the situation wasn't dire, he laughed a little with that inelegant snort Gabriel tried to hate. But it was shallow, cold, far from the one he had back in Iceland.

“You know what you’re doing isn’t okay,” Jack said. “You question yourself. And it doesn’t make you someone bad. It'd have been easier for me if you were.”

Something snapped. Gabriel didn’t know exactly why now and not before, but Jack throwing everything away and showing this unfaltering trust in him was suddenly too much.

He snarled, grasping Jack’s collar; so tightly he felt the small cuts of his right hand stretch and pull and bleed again under his glove, a clear reminder of the atrocities he committed. He wasn’t someone good. He was trying and failing every time he let someone die, every time he told himself the pain he was causing was for the greater good.

“You don’t get to decide if I’m worth saving or not, you fucking moron. You can’t just—”

“Gabe,” Jack interrupted, tiredly yet firmly. “Please.”

He had grasped Gabriel's hands half-heartedly, an automatic reaction from the soldier he once was. Still, Jack's hands merely rested on Gabriel's, didn't apply any pressure nor try to pry them off his collar. He looked as defeated as determined, and it was wrong, so wrong. Gabriel grit his teeth, let him go. His fingers still tingled with the heat of Jack’s skin, perceptible even under a layer of leather.

The older man readjusted himself on the sofa, turned away from Jack to hide how much he was shaking in anger. The self-loathing he always tried to contain was bursting out in uncontrolled tremors.

Jack didn’t deserve this, Gabriel thought fiercely. He could step up and stop the blonde from executing whatever he planned. But it would be no different than saving the children he decided not to, and let dozens of others die; than valuating ethics and failing to rescue the hostages. He needed to think of consequences and others, and sacrificing Jack was the best option in the situation. Overwatch could stand again. The agents wouldn’t be suspected and put on trial. Gabriel could try to be a better man. 

Everything would be salvageable, except for Jack. And Gabriel couldn’t bear the idea of Jack _leaving_ , whatever “ _leaving_ ” could mean in this situation.

Gabriel closed his eyes, counted from ten to one, trying to calm himself down, to prevent him from roaring in anger. He was nearing three when he felt Jack rest his head on his shoulder, an unexpectedly warm and soothing presence.

“What do you think you’re doing, Jack,” Gabriel said flatly, eyes fluttering open to glimpse at the mop of blonde, messy, hair.

Jack shrugged, the movement making his right shoulder dig uncomfortably in Gabriel’s left arm.

“I’m drunk,” he said.

He wasn’t.

Jack knew it. Gabriel knew it.

Gabriel still swallowed down any comment, and only sniffed loudly.

“I don’t see how my shoulder will help,” he said instead, faking annoyance.

Jack seemed to notice the forced irritation, but didn’t mention it.

They didn’t meet often lately, and Gabriel couldn’t remember the last time Jack was comfortable enough to initiate a physical contact. Of course, despite the displayed calm, there were these little signs of apprehension on the blonde’s face that only Gabriel could notice. The way Jack’s lips were slightly pinched, or the way he kept scratching the back of his neck.

But Jack was also directing a genuine smile toward Gabriel. It was trusting and soft, and the older man felt his heart ache and long, his feelings a bittersweet mess. He somehow found back his reckless and selfless best friend under the Strike-Commander layer, and their own normalcy was back only to be lost again.

It wasn’t unfair; Gabriel was honest enough with himself to know that they, as war veterans who did terrible things, didn’t deserve inner peace.

It was painful nonetheless.

Gabriel opened his mouth, stubbornly wanting to say something, to propose another plan where both of them could stay safe.

_We can go away. We can leave this place. We can disappear elsewhere._

There were a million things he wanted, but none of them were all right and all of them were selfish. He was caring too much when he wasn’t supposed to, so Gabriel kept silent, only raising a hand to ruffle the blonde’s hair, making them messier. Jack half-groaned, half-laughed, but didn’t protest.

“Sorry,” Jack said delicately after a while, the humor of his voice gone.

“It’s okay,” Gabriel replied, although it wasn’t okay at all. “I’m sorry too.”

“Visit me, sometimes, after it’s done” Jack added, after a thought, another smile tugging up his lips.

Gabriel found himself unable to look away, unable to say anything.

“What?” Jack asked, worried for Gabriel when he should be worried for himself, preparing himself to deal with the press conference next Wednesday, preparing himself to face judgement and probably… probably…

Gabriel couldn’t think about it. He didn’t want to.

And so he drew a shuddery breath, rose a hand –the left one, the unmarred one, the clean one— and used it to tilt his Jack’s chin up. The blonde let himself being handled with care, curiosity overtaking his face, but he didn’t try to stop Gabriel. He just blinked owlishly, a small hint of surprise when Gabriel pressed a small, delicate kiss on Jack’s mouth.

It was slow and awkward, Jack’s lips chapped and dry, and Gabriel’s beard probably unpleasant against his skin. But everything was perfect as it was, and they were both frozen in time like this, when they took time to explore each other’s lips, mouth, tasting alcohol and smelling the other’s fragrance. Jack was still using this stupid marigold perfume he wore in Madrid, and all their shared memories hurt, the dull ache of Gabriel’s chest morphing into a sharp, stabbing pain.

Maybe lust and curiosity were the only thing they felt, at first. But now, Gabriel, hands gripping desperately Jack’s shoulder as if he was a drowning man, realized that no, it wasn’t just lust. It was another four lettered L word that fueled his want and pain and joy; a word he didn’t want to admit now. It was too late to say it, with Jack leaving his side.

Gabriel felt lost, hands sliding down around Jack’s collar to grasp it, and Jack, _Jack_ ; he didn’t even try to deepen the kiss as he did before. He just rested his own hands on Gabriel’s side and kept their embrace gentle, careful.

It was as if Gabriel was still someone worth treasuring.

When they parted, Jack was trying to refrain himself from shaking, and Gabriel covered his pain with humor; familiar and reassuring.

“I can’t really let you go without knowing how to properly kiss, blondie,” he said, brushing, probably, their last kiss into a joke.

Jack probably knew Gabriel’s feelings. They were overwhelming, obvious. Still, he didn’t comment, barking out a laugh instead.

They both pretended their voices weren’t creaking, weren’t rough, weren’t breaking.

 

 

 

“So, Morrison and you are…?”

It was already past midnight, and Gabriel was sprawled on his bed, unable to sleep. His phone in a hand, the other fumbling with a pen, a feeling of déjà vu overtook him as Jesse spoke. Maybe they had this conversation, before. It was possible, as Jesse had been his only confident for a while.

“Friends, maybe. Again,” Gabriel supplied, completing Jesse’s sentence.

He didn’t explain what Jack wanted to do. Not that he didn’t trust Jesse on that matter, but it still seemed unreal to even himself.

Gabriel rolled on his back, watched the ceiling. After a while, he asked, “So, how is the mission with the Shimadas going?”

“Mighty fine boss,” Jesse replied, thought his voice was hesitant. Gabriel could pick embarrassment in his former protégé’s voice, making him curious. Something interesting was happening. Jesse was _never_ embarrassed. Unless…

“Is the older Shimada nice?”

Jesse let out a string of curses and a groan. Bullseye.

“I’ll make su—” Jesse began to stutter, but Gabriel’s holo-communicator flickered on, effectively cutting the threat short.

“Wait. Blackwatch stuff. I’ll call you back,” the older man said, hanging up as an offended Jesse’s voice crackled in the mic.

Gabriel took the call, smoothing down his face into an incarnation of impassibility. As the hologram shot up, basking the room in a blue glow, a fellow Blackwatch agent appeared. His holographic silhouette a messy blur at first, Gabriel recognized Lucian Baumann when it cleared up.

Lucian was another Blackwatch agent. A nice and competent man, albeit a little bit naïve –he grew up surrounded by the heroic stories of Overwatch, and joined their ranks when he was eighteen. More skilled in strategy planning, hacking and medical trainings, Angela quite liked him. He was transferred a little more than a year ago into Blackwatch, as his peculiar skillset were more useful there. Now working on the intelligence gathering network, Lucian, fortunately, didn’t have to witness Gabriel’s harsh methods.

“Ah, hum, good morning?” Lucian croaked, his German accent thick. Even with the grainy picture of the hologram, Gabriel could see the dark circles under his eyes. “I have a file. About what you asked. But it’s _weird_.”

Gabriel was immediately feeling awake. He grabbed his beanie and his vest.

“I’ll join you now. Where are you?” he barked, and the other agent frowned, as startled as nervous to have his captain joining him with such urgency.

“Oh, at the office. Do you wish to…”

“You stay where you are, agent.”

Gabriel raced through the buildings, crossed the courtyard. The thin rain of the beginning of autumn soaked through his beanie and wet his hair, but he didn’t care.

Finally. He finally had something on Jane, on the rogue agents; something tangible and real after all these years.

He took the stairs two by two and barged in Baumann’s office, the one Genji Shimada occupied before he left. Tumbling in loudly, in a way a captain shouldn’t be, Gabriel let the other agent gawk at him. The older man didn’t even try to explain himself. He walked to Baumann, sat on the table.

“So?”

Baumann’s cleared his throat, turned on his datapad, and handed it silently to Gabriel.

Opening the file on the small device, Gabriel was surprised to find a tremendous amount of information about Jane Gilmore. From her birthday to her death; from the smallest candy she bought to the estate she surprisingly could afford, everything was meticulously listed. Gabriel read it, eyes jumping rapidly from a word to another, trying to find anything worth the time Baumann and himself spent on her file. He flipped a page of long shopping lists, another about her restaurant habits. Baumann, too shy and nervous to say anything, tapped his fingers against his desk as he waited for Gabriel to finish.

There was nothing useful for a while, but then, in a message sent to an unknown, private mail, a butchered sentence among others: “… go factory… lake. Agents. There… fire Overwatch.”.

Gabriel scowled at the datapad. Was Jane trying to burn something in the warehouse? Or maybe the whole Overwatch building? He swept his gaze to Baumann.

“How come you didn’t find that earlier? It’s been years,” he asked, suspicious.

Baumann fidgeted, his cheeks heating up.

“It was super well-hidden, before. People tried to delete it, but what’s on Internet stays on Internet. I don’t know why, everything became easier to find these last days? Like someone wants us to find this information. I couldn’t recover everything, though.”

“If that’s really the case, these can be fake, Baumann,” Gabriel breathed out. Excitement gone, he was tired.

It was not enough to be sure of anything. His suspicions were tuned down by Jack to avoid any inner turmoil in Overwatch, but a lot of agents knew about his mistrust. This information on Jane, suddenly appearing out of nowhere, was maybe a ruse, something to steer his attention elsewhere. It wasn’t conclusive evidence, after all.

Baumann cleared his throat.

“I found something else,” he said, handing out a small sheet of paper. It was a death certificate carefully wrapped in a plastic sleeve. It was a little bit torn, obviously creased before. A corner was burnt. “It’s her daughter’s. Agent Gilmore didn’t mention it, but she had a daughter. She died when she was a couple of months old. By… erm… How to…”

“Quick, Baumann, I can handle the truth,” Gabriel said, wrinkling his nose.

“She was killed during a mission, sir. Under your supervision, sir.”

Gabriel frowned. “But Blackwatch…”

“It was before, during the Omnic crisis, sir. It is, erm. A good motive, sir, to blame us.”

Of course. The Omnic Crisis did a lot of collateral damage, as any war would. Sometimes, a small house crumbled down under repeated assaults, and a family was in there. Sometimes, a bullet, that the wind swayed away from its supposed target, pierced through a civilian’s heart. There was a lot of different circumstances, too much sometimes and maybes; but it was how war was. Unsure and deadly.

Gabriel sighed and refrained himself to show his remorse. Instead, he rose the paper under the light, checked the symbol engraved into its layers. The death certificate seemed authentic, albeit damaged.

“Did you get anything about the person she sent the message to?” he asked, curious. “Or why everything’s suddenly so easy to find?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Baumann muttered under his breath, making Gabriel raise an eyebrow, before he cut himself short and said, “No, sir, but I’m on it.”

“Okay. Does Strike Commander Morrison know?”

“No, sir,” Baumann repeated. “I’ve seen him walk by, though, with some coffee, sir. He still might be awake.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes, huffed.

“If you think I care about that, agent, you’re mistaken,” he sneered, refraining himself to laugh. “Thanks. I’ll pass by later. Take a break, go take some air, then check the death certificate. We need to know for certain if it’s a real one. I’ll get Strike-Commander Morrison.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s raining, so take your cap with you.”

Baumann nodded and stood up, picking up his jacket. Gabriel kept the datapad securely in his inner pocket, taking a deep breath.

The evidence was thin and circumstantial, but it was maybe enough to dig out the “old factory incident”, as called by the UN, from the cold cases. At any rate, Gabriel got the confirmation that his suspicions weren’t unfounded. But if Jane Gilmore was indeed a traitor, how many others were there, hidden, plotting? Before the mail, he just thought about a single rogue agent contacting criminals –there were no more incidents, after Jane’s death— but what if she wasn’t alone? She mentioned _agents_ , after all.

Fuck. The man who almost killed Gabriel was maybe with them, around, watching. And even if the clues Baumann found were pretty much unexploitable, Gabriel had to prepare himself for the worse. Cornered criminals were dangerous. Unpredictable.

Gritting his teeth at the lack of answers, he climbed up a long flight of stairs, and pushed open the door of Jack’s office without knocking.

Jack had indeed a cup of coffee in his hands, and was flipping through the first pages of a heavy file. He jumped at the sound, and rose his head, scowling. When he noticed Gabriel, he visibly relaxed, and even offered a smile, albeit a tired one.

“Oh, Gabe,” the blonde said. “Good morning, I guess.”

Gabriel stood frozen, unable to form correct sentences. Jack rose an eyebrow.

“You okay, Gabe?”

“You can say it’s my fault,” Gabriel said, the words coming out before he can’t even consider them. He fumbled with his jacket, pulling out the datapad. “I’m pretty sure we have rogue agents here. I don’t know how many but—shit, I really don’t know. It can be anyone.”

“Gabe, what are you talking about? You can’t…”

“Tell the truth. Say it’s me. Then dismantle Overwatch. We don’t have time to investigate, I don’t even know who we can trust and…”

“What? But the UN won’t believe me, Gabe, and they won’t let you have any special treatment even if I ask, you’re going to be sentenced to death and I can’t—”

Jack stopped. Gabriel wasn’t listening anymore.

Behind the closed door of the office, he heard, faintly at first, a crack of concrete then a shriek. It soon turned into scream, and the smell of smoke reached his nose. Jack probably also noticed that something was amiss, by the way he ran and threw open the door, stepping out to glance around in bewilderment.

“Gabriel!” he shouted from the corridor. The whole building shook again, the tremors stronger; and suddenly, it was the old factory again, when concrete crushed Gabriel’s ribs, when he couldn’t feel his arms and his legs.

The deafening creaks and roars of not a single explosion, but several ones resounded around. Under his feet, the floor trembled, above his head, the lights flickered. He stared stupidly at the opened door.

The building shook again. As the horrendous painting Gabriel noticed earlier crashed on the floor, Jack jumped. He yelled again, but Gabriel didn’t quite understand what, the rush of his blood too loud in his ears.

Gabriel knew something terrible was happening, that he needed to go, but an unusual panic took over him. _Not again, not again_ ; he repeated in his mind or maybe aloud, he didn’t really know nor care. He watched, terrified, unable to move, as a heavy beam fell and tore the floor, almost taking Jack with it. Fortunately, the blonde jumped away in time, his blue eyes blinking in terror, pupils wide with adrenaline. The newly fuming hole, formed by the beam, separated both of them in the corridor.

“We need to leave now!” Jack screamed, gesturing frantically at Gabriel as a burst of flame licked the back of his head, frying and curling the end of his hair, before it retreated back.

Gabriel finally forced himself to move against the numbing fear. It wasn’t like him, to be caught off guard by his emotions like that. He glanced down the hole, eyes landing on the floor of the lower level exposed by the beam.

“We need to jump down here,” he said. Somewhere under him, something else exploded in a loud cacophony. He squared his jaw, shedding the fear away from his demeanor. “We can’t go by the window, Jack. We need to go in there.”

Jack inhaled sharply. “Okay,” he breathed. “Okay.”

They jumped one after another, and landed two floors below Jack’s office without harm, thanks to their enhancements. They reoriented themselves, trying to find a safe exit. Fortunately, the stairs were mostly untouched by the chaos surrounding them, and Gabriel tugged at Jack’s sleeve, urging him to follow his lead. The blonde obeyed without a word, keeping cautious eyes around.

Everything was crumbling down around them. The fortunately empty offices were a mess, and the dimly lit stairwell was soon blocked off by the heavy rubbles of a broken ceiling. Gabriel swore loudly, turning sharply to find another way out. Could they pass through the window and get to another floor? Was it too dangerous?

They had no choice beyond that. The path was cut off, and taking the lifts was too dangerous –they were probably broken, anyway. Their time was running out, the whole building precariously swaying under the unrelenting assault of fire and explosions. Gabriel ran, Jack followed, not asking a single question. He knew what his former partner wanted to do, as always, as they were back in a mission, like old times. Danger was familiar to them.

Before they could reach the window, though, a stretch of wall gave away behind Gabriel, trapping Jack under it. The blonde gasped in surprise.

“Jack, you okay?” Gabriel cried, stopping himself in his run. The blonde hummed under the heap of rubbles, worryingly calm considering the circumstances.

“I think so. My arm’s stuck, though. Can you lift that thing?” he said.

Gabriel pushed pieces of heavy plaster away, coughed out the smoke and the dust clogging his lungs as he did. He pulled Jack out of the mess. A relieved sigh escaped Gabriel’s lips when he noticed that Jack was unharmed, except for the small cuts on his stuck arm.

“Hurry,” Gabriel breathed. “We need to move.”

As a quite recent building and a military one, the Overwatch HQ was built to sustain a tremendous amount of damage; but it was for external assaults, not inner ones. Soon, it was breaking and groaning under the relentless explosions, and Gabriel felt his feet slip, felt Jack trying to halt his fall to no avail, and both of them were sliding toward a disemboweled wall overlooking another building.

They both jumped through it, successfully landing on the other building unharmed, the one they were into crumbling down in a mess of smoking rubbles. Jack, dirt smeared on his face, whistled.

“Wow, good thing I kept training,” he said, a breathless amusement accompanying his words.

“It’s not the time, Jack,” Gabriel said, as he tried to find a path out.

This building, encompassing the medical and technological areas, if not under the explosions, was still ready to fall, and both Jack and Gabriel knew they couldn’t linger much. The walls were creaking, fragilized by fire and shockwaves, and the floor felt worryingly unstable under their feet. Jack stripped his face of his faint grin to put back the impassive Strike-Commander mask.

They needed to survive this living Hell to find the culprits. They weren’t naïve enough to think about accident. The detonations were too well organized, too methodical, too… Clean.

Jack walked carefully, balancing himself with his arms when the building shook. Frowning, lips pursed, he was inspecting the floor, searching for a weapon. Gabriel knew Jack was itching for his trademark blue rifle, like he craved the reassurance his shotguns gave him.

“Jack, we need to go n—”

The tower shook again, but this time, pipes snapped, walls cracked, and chunks of plaster rained on them. Fuck. Jack was under that crumbling ceiling, he needed to go before he…

With a desperate howl, Gabriel ran to Jack, pushing harshly the blonde away from a rusty pipe. He felt the piercing pain of metal tearing through his flesh.

It wasn’t the first time. Gabriel already sustained similar wounds in the old, abandoned factory years ago, but it was different, now. The wound wasn’t on his arm or his leg.

The lights swarmed around Gabriel’s field of vision in a confusing dance for a while, and he distantly heard Jack’s sharp intake of breath. Immediately, he sought to reach the blonde, but found himself unable to move, unable to push himself up, unable to do anything else but gurgle out a mix of saliva and blood as he wanted to scream in pain.

There was an expanding pool of blood on the floor. Gabriel had to blink several times to realize the blood was his, and that the rusty pipe he saved Jack from was now coated in crimson red, jutting out his abdomen in a gory display. He drew a shaky breath, looked around to see Jack crawling out of a pile of rubbles, moaning in pain.

His face showed several deep cuts, his shoulder seemed dislocated, and one of his leg was broken. Otherwise, Jack didn’t seem to have any life-threatening injuries. Gabriel tried to let out a relieved sigh, only to feel the dents of the metal pipe shift painfully in his guts.

“Gabe,” Jack gasped in shock as he reached Gabriel, pushing himself up despite the pain to take a better look at the injury. “Don’t move Gabe, don’t…”

His eyes were shiny with tears, and his whole body was trembling. His hands carefully reached Gabriel’s face, caressing his cheeks, thumbs brushing at the corner of his eyes. The dislocated shoulder cracked, but Jack, except for a wince, didn’t seem to care.

“Oh, Gabe,” Jack said again, choking down a sob. He was panicking. Jack Morrison was panicking. “What… What do I do? You’re supposed to tell me, Gabe, you’re not…”

Gabriel didn’t need to see his wounds to know it was bad. Very bad. They have known each other for decades, and while Jack was usually angry at him for being reckless, he never cried nor lost his composure; always prioritizing the goal of their missions. He wasn’t named Strike-Commander for nothing, after all.

The building groaned, but seemed stable enough for now; and Gabriel could still pick up the siren of an ambulance approaching, before his hearing faded with the loss of blood. Gabriel took careful, little breaths. He needed to stay calm and focused. He needed to refrain himself from losing consciousness, even if it was tempting to let go.

But Jack, hovering over Gabriel, occupied most of his field of vision and was enough to force him to stay awake. His blue eyes were wet and a little red, and his hands were smoothing his hair gently. Gabriel coughed out some blood, whole body tensing under the pain. Jack screwed his eyes shut.

“They are coming, okay? You need to stay with me,” he whispered, more a desperate plea than a demand.

Gabriel only managed to nod.

“Good, good,” Jack continued. “You’ll be okay. Help is coming.”

The blonde’s warm hands blindly searched for Gabriel’s cold ones. “You’re going to be fine. Everything’s—”

Their fingertips just barely brushed, when Jack yelped and crumbled down.

Gabriel blinked, not understanding what exactly happened. He tried to move, to reach Jack, only to see a pair of shiny boots that weren’t theirs. Jaw squared, Gabriel stopped to struggle, and glared up at the silhouette standing behind Jack’s unconscious body.

He silently attempted to come up with a plan despite his sorry state, to brace himself for combat even if he knew who was going to lose.

The silhouette twirled a gun in his hand, no doubt the weapon he used to hit the back of Jack’s head. Gabriel tried to see the person’s features, but the lack of light and his wounds, impacting his focus, made it impossible.

“Funny how you can’t just die,” the silhouette mused with a deep voice. A man’s? “I almost used all the bombs and here you are, still breathing. Wow. I have to admire that”

Gabriel tensed. He couldn’t recognize that voice, even if there was a certain familiarity in it. No –not the man of the factory, Gabriel thought, frowning. This one was slightly lighter.

“Sorry. Couldn’t let you two go, even if Morrison’s plan wasn’t half bad. He almost escaped us and finished his miserable life in prison, out of our reach.” A sigh. “That’d be a pity, isn’t it?”

Voice silenced by his injuries, Gabriel could just stare furiously at the man as he felt life bleed out of him. The man laughed, the voice strangely soft for such a sinister character. He wasn’t in hurry, pacing around the ruined room as he talked.

“Anyway. Good thing I bugged Morrisson’s office, huh. I can finally make Jane useful. I didn’t think it would work so well, to be honest. Because you know what? She was the only one to actually believe in you, Reyes. She joined us with forged papers and death certificates, told us she ‘lost people she cared about because of Overwatch, too’. Ah, she almost convinced me, you know, good actress. But then, you followed her, that night, and we had to get rid of her. We almost got you, too, and I was very disappointed when the others told me that you survived. But now that I got to see Morrison crying, I begin to think that was worth it.”

Gabriel wrinkled his nose. That man sure loved talking.

“Hey, Reyes, tell me, do you know how many people we lost because of Overwatch?”, the silhouette continued, voice rising. “How many I, alone, lost? Your stupid funds from rich bitches from Iceland won’t ever be enough.”

Gabriel groaned; not because he wanted to reply, but because the pain was unbearable as he tried to move. He shouldn’t. Blood oozed out faster. But Gabriel was so, so angry, and unable to lash out.

The man, noticing the anger, put a foot on Jack’s back. A provocation. Gabriel grit his teeth.

“And did you really think only Overwatch’s agents hated you two? You forgot the medics. You forgot Blackwatch. Gosh. Even good old McCree was talking about how insane you were during missions, Reyes. Do you think it’s a coincidence that he left exactly before… That?”

He gestured the chaos surrounding them. Gabriel still couldn’t see his face but he didn’t care. His hands itched for a gun, for a weapon to bash that man into a messy pulp.

“Well, sorry, sir, but it’s not.”

A perfectly faked German accent coated these last words. Gabriel stopped dead in his track; and he just knew.

_Lucian Baumann._

Baumann laughed, quite content with himself. He pulled out what seemed to be a phone from his pocket and dialed a number Gabriel couldn’t see.

“D-..Doctor Ziegler? Something h-happened. No. N-No. I’m sorry. They… They d-didn’t…” Baumann carefully said, punctuating his sentences with sobs, even if his face showed nothing close to sadness. He took a deep breath, and even before Gabriel heard the words, he just knew how it was going to end.

“They didn’t survive, doctor.”

Baumann hung up. In the dark, Gabriel could still see the glint of a sinister grin as he escaped the ruined room.

“Good bye, Reyes.”

Before he disappeared from Gabriel’s line of sight, he pressed a button on his phone.

And, in a thunderous cacophony, plaster and death rained down.

Gabriel grasped Jack’s hand.

 

 

 

 

Gabriel woke up in a dark, cramped room smelling of ether. Far from the comfort of last time, there wasn’t Jack’s mop of blonde hair beside him, but only tubes and jars filled with gruesome organs. When he moved, a burning pain coursed his whole body. It was overwhelming –he felt engulfed by flames but, at the same time, trapped in ice.

He yelled, fell flat against the mattress. He tore the tubes out of his arms as he sought desperately some help, any help.

Unable to stand up, Gabriel pushed himself out of the bed. The floor wasn’t painful when he collided with it, surely because all of his body was already putting him in an indescribable agony.

“Hello?”, Gabriel rasped, his throat dry. He cursed. Even talking was difficult.

Fortunately, someone was around. The heavy door opened a fraction, enough to let Gabriel’s eyes meet an overly frightened Angela Ziegler’s. A hand covering her mouth, she was shaking with fear.

Gabriel looked at her from where he was, on the floor. Full of hope, he tried to push himself up.

“Doctor,” he began, reaching out for her. But Angela stopped him with a distressed cry and began to seal the door shut.

“No, Doc—Angela, don’t, please, I…” Gabriel babbled, feeling himself approach the door. The lack of exercise probably made his legs numb. Shit. How long was he out? Why his senses seemed… _off_? He could smell, he could see, he could hear, but it was so different from before.

Angela didn’t listen to him. She closed the door without a word.

Lost, trying to reorient himself, to understand why was she acting like this, Gabriel rose a hand to knock at the door.

He stopped.

He didn’t see his hand.

Instead, he only saw a black mist.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was very angsty. Sorry.  
> (I'm not)
> 
> You can talk with me on Tumblr (roboticake.tumblr.com) and Twitter (twitter.com/roboticake)! I don't bite, but I speak a lot in French.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Salvation is strange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 6th chapter. 6666 words.  
> (edit: at least it used to -i added some stuff-) 
> 
> No, more seriously, I have so much trouble writing lately. And the chapter kept going longer and longer and around ~6000 words I understood that I needed to split it in two parts lmao. So no kisses here and wow, 7 chapters now! If my brain don't tell me, "how about you add some shit about..." it'll be good. 
> 
> Enjoy. I hope it's an okay chapter. I often fail to meet expectations.

Gabriel didn’t know where he was.

Surrounded by jars of floating organs, a single medical bed, and a pile bloody syringes; it looked like he was in some sort of twisted laboratory. For the umpteenth time, he got up from the bed and walked around, fingers brushing walls and pulling on IVs, searching for any clues. Why was he here? Why would Angela leave him here?

The machines punctuated his movements and guided him; as they were the only source of light and sound in the otherwise dark, silent room. With eerie shadows and incessant beeping, they created a strange atmosphere. Gabriel glanced up, narrowed his eyes at the ceiling as if he could pierce a hole through the steel with the sheer force of his mind.

After a while, confused and lost, he closed his eyes and sighed. He let himself plop down, for a second, onto the unexpectedly comfortable vinyl chair of the room. It reminded him the chair Jack had, back in his office; except that this one was obviously cheaper.

His days in both Overwatch and Blackwatch seemed to be a lifetime ago, Gabriel mused. But time, in this small room, was relative. Maybe it was only a couple of days, since the end of the organization. Maybe it was months. The absence of windows made it hard to guess.

Was it noon? Was it midnight? The room was deadly silent and the building seemingly deserted. It smelled of nothing except copper and steel and disinfectant, and behind the sole sealed door of the room, no one had passed by for a long, long time.

Doctor Ziegler was nowhere to be seen. She vanished after she abandoned Gabriel here; after she told someone –over the phone? By holo-communicator?– that everything was _wrong_ , that it _wasn’t supposed to happen like this_.

Gabriel drew a shaky breath. He had stood up again and decided to step into the bathroom, stopping his aimless wandering as he arrived in front of the sink. Hands gripping its cold steel, he stared at his reflection on the scratched mirror.

It offered him a version of himself he didn’t recognize.

Scars were drawn all over his face, pale lines contrasting with his dark skin. On his forehead, two of them. One, almost hidden by his grown hair, had marked his left ear like an earring. Another split a corner of his lips; creating a half-Cheshire grin Gabriel gently touched with a trembling finger.

Since he woke up, Gabriel had seen his face more than once, but he couldn’t get used to it. He wanted to gag, to tell himself that no, that _thing_ in the mirror wasn’t him.

This time, though, he took a deep breath. He resisted the urge to break the mirror and instead probed his cheeks. Gabriel gingerly pulled the skin there, observing how the injured corner of his lips revealed too many teeth, razor sharp and monstrous.

He winced. Shuddered. His hands immediately fell back on the sink, trying to escape the vision of his own body.

When Gabriel rose them again, he noticed that horror and fear had turned him into a mist again; the same mist he tried to use to knock on the steel door, to claw a way out a here, begging for freedom.

If his scars were disturbing, the sight of his… misty form was worse. It was nightmarish. Gabriel wanted to grip the sink until his knuckles turned white and hurt, despite knowing that he couldn’t, not like this, when he was immaterial and ghostly and monstrous.

Gabriel grit his teeth. He counted to three, breathing as the numbers stumbled out of his mouth is small cloud of black smoke. And then, when a sense of calmness washed over him, he dared to stare at his reflection, mustering up his courage. He wanted to focus, to pierce the mystery of what he had become, but the lights of a machine, behind him, filtered through the smoke of his body and blended their green glow with the ruby red of his eyes. The resulting vision was sinister in a way that made him lose his resolve. Was he even human, like this? Was he a ghoul? Was he a ghost? Was there even something to understand beyond that?

Gabriel raised a trembling hand, biting his lower lip. He pushed it where his heart was supposed to be, trying desperately to find a heartbeat. He found a slight resistance, a strange coldness around his fingers, but nothing resembling to life.

He tried to choke down a broken sob as he hastily ripped his hand out of his body.

Gabriel felt the tension leave him when the smoke dissipated. He fell on the cold linoleum, legs weak. He was so exhausted, so confused, so angry. He was many, many, things, Gabriel thought with despair, but _definitely_ _not_ human.

He yelled in frustration, only to have the echo of his own voice answer. The silence following his outburst was thick.

Gabriel wasn’t someone that believed in fate, in Hell or in Heaven. Still, he didn’t refrain himself from wondering if it was some sort of divine retribution, to be confined in this chamber for eternity, like he confined so many prisoners before, in windowless interrogation rooms.

Eternity.

Eternity was the key word.

Gabriel had learned over the hours, probably the days confined in there, that he didn’t need anything to survive anymore. His initial panic upon realizing that he was trapped without any help had receded the moment he remarked that the pain of hunger never stabbed his stomach; that the burning of a dry throat never came. But now, now, Gabriel was scared. Terrorized.

Eternity? Here? Alone? In the dark?

And if Gabriel spent the rest of his existence here? And if he was doomed to haunt this room; this facility? A snort. ‘Haunt’ was indeed a fitting word.

Clenching his hands into fists, Gabriel found a certain calm in the way his nails plunged into his palms, in the way they hurt him. At least he could still feel pain. And pain and fear were proof of some... Humanity, weren’t they? He could still fight. Find a way out.

Gabriel closed his eyes, pressing his eyelids shut as he squared his jaw. He couldn’t just stop searching for a solution, even if abandoning was a tempting idea. It wasn’t like he could die of starvation or thirst, anyway. But then, when he swept up his eyes to the vent above the sink, a new resolve possessed him.

He had noticed the small sealed vent some time ago, and wondered for a long time where it could lead, when he laid on the bed, too frightened to rest but too tired to move.

After all, the door could be sealed shut, with no apparent way out, but that vent sure was bound to lead somewhere else –in another part of the facility or outside, Gabriel didn’t care, he just needed to be out of this room–. And with his new form, as a mist, he could maybe slide out of this damned cage.  

It was a thought that kept Gabriel hoping a little bit, even though he never dared himself to try to crawl out by the vent. And if he failed? If he got stuck there and died pitifully; crushed by steel and slashed by fans? A shiver crawled up his spine at the mere idea. Still, he pushed himself up the sink, standing carefully on it to peek inside the vent. What did he have to lose? He was dead to the world and nobody was going to find him. The only one who would care enough to do it was gone, too, under concrete and rusty pipes.

The cold steel bit the skin of his bare feet. His tears prickled the skin of his cheeks. The hum of the air was loud in his ears.

And Gabriel didn’t care.

He was so desperate, so lost, so unsure. He needed something, more than hope. A plan. A strategy. Something to try.

Gabriel focused on his body, tried to turn himself into this strange smoke and keep his body like this –ethereal, light, invulnerable—.

It was only when his sight blurred on its edges that Gabriel realized that it worked. Everything felt suddenly cold and distant, and from the corner of his eyes, he could notice tendrils of black smoke curling around him, twitching and twisting as they began to crawl through the vent.

Gabriel never thought about regretting his past life as a captain fallen from grace and condemned to lead a pack of infamous criminals; but now, with tendrils of smoke ( _his_ , they were _his_ , they were a part of _him_ ) curling around thin air, around him, Gabriel was certain that he was more monster than human.

The truth dawned on him, cold and crushing, and suddenly, everything was too much, too overwhelming, too desperate. He was never going to be _normal_ again.

Gabriel’s focus wavered. He felt his whole body burn as it changed back into a physical form, and he dropped heavily on the floor, feet slipping from the sink.

He laid there, on the cold tiles of the bathroom, naked, blinking at the ceiling. The ugly medical gown he was wearing was probably discarded when his whole body changed earlier, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t cold. He wasn’t ashamed.

He wasn’t anything anymore.

Tears burned his eyes, sobs cut his breath, and this time, Gabriel didn’t try to stop them.

In this cage, if there was no one to witness him break down, it also meant that there was no one to pick up the pieces either. It was usually Jack’s task. But Jack wasn’t here, Gabriel thought, distressed. And he wouldn’t be here anymore.

 

 

Salvation was strange.

It was a spider with shiny red eyes that slid into the laboratory, one day, when the door suddenly hissed open. Gabriel, slumped against the opposite wall, didn’t move, at first. He already had too many dreams about freedom, and every time a part of his sanity was burned away when he woke up with his hope crushed.

Gabriel grunted when he heard the spider’s legs tapping on the floor, the clicks of heels too loud in the heavy silence of the room. The beeping machines were already long gone, their circuits pulled out with rage and their body pushed down.

The clicks and the taps stopped in front of him, and with a weary sigh, Gabriel glanced up. He stared at the eight angry dots of red directed at him. Shining in the darkness, strange and unsettling, Gabriel was reminded of his own eyes. Were they as frightening as these unblinking ones? Were they as red?

He didn’t remember.

The mirror was also broken.

He had new scars on his knuckles.

“Gabriel Reyes. How pitiful you are,” the spider said disdainfully.

The eyes shifted and some of them disappeared in a hiss. Only one remained as the spider lit up a torchlight. Its light splashed the walls and the jars with blinding white and Gabriel grunted, blinked. He rose a hand to his eyes.

He wanted to ask a myriad of questions. Who are you? Why are you here? What are you? Are you real?

Gabriel tried to speak, but his voice was too rough with disuse, his tone too distorted by time, and his words too hard to find. And so, he kept silent, let his eye adjust to the light.

Soon, he realized that the spider wasn’t really a spider.

It was a tall woman in her early thirties. Seven of her eyes were, in fact, red dots embedded in a tactical visor; while the eighth one was the pointer of her weapon -a remarkably well made sniper rifle.

Remarkable enough to make Gabriel growl and howl in rage. He recognized it. How couldn’t he?

It was the same weapon that shot Ana.

Without a thought, Gabriel lunged at the woman, his vision blurring with anger, hands trying to reach her neck. He wasn’t sure if she was real and it didn’t really matter. He just wanted to squeeze her life out of her, feel the bones crack under his fingers, plunge his thumbs in the hole of her throat.

“Amélie,” he gritted out, anger dripping from his words. His legs turned to smoke, hovered over his head. A change out of control, dictated by his emotions. It often happened.

“How dare you show your face, you...” Gabriel began, squeezing a shoulder, grasping an elbow under his hands. Amélie was irritatingly calm.

Suddenly, there was a shot, loud and close enough to make Gabriel’s ears ring. Cut short in the middle of his sentence, caught by surprise, he didn’t realize Amélie shot him in his thigh.

Gabriel expected the sizzling burn of the bullet, the familiar pain of his torn flesh. Instead, he felt nothing, except for a slight discomfort where the wound was, and soon, the small, gaping hole was filled with black mist and disappeared. Gabriel looked down. He blinked stupidly at where the wound was supposed to be and prodded his skin after he sat down, shaking. Amélie seized this moment to take a couple of steps back and stare.

“Interesting,” she said after a while, her thick French accent roughening up her ‘r’. She seemed more surprised -or impressed- than curious. It was hard to really grasp the emotions she tried to convey.

If she really tried to convey them or not was another question. The way she chuckled, after her small comment, was devoid of amusement, and Gabriel observed her, his nose scrunched up. He couldn’t figure her out.

Of course, now closer to her, he could study Amélie’s face more intently, but it revealed nothing very striking, except for the blueish hue of her skin, noticeable under the faint light the torch offered. Otherwise, she remained almost frighteningly detached: anything Gabriel could pick up was entirely physical, tangible. It was as if the woman had nothing close to a personality –or maybe, it was so subdued, so confined, he couldn’t notice them–.

Gabriel narrowed his eyes, then cocked his head to a side. He knew Amélie, briefly, but he didn’t know what happened to her exactly. He guessed she was a Talon dormant agent tasked to seduce and kill Gérard Lacroix. But now, seeing her like this, so cold, so strange, so inhuman… Gabriel wasn’t so sure anymore. There was something more.

After a while, he could see little signs of sadness weighing down Amélie’s shoulders, almost invisible. They made her frown for a second, but then, they were gone, vanished. They only dulled her eyes for a moment before they left, as if they were never here.

Gabriel looked away. He prodded his thigh again, considered picking up a sheet or a piece of cloth to hide his nakedness –he didn’t really bother to cover himself after his multiple failures, since he was persuaded to be alone until the end of times–.

A sudden exhaustion stole away his drive, his anger, his rage. Gabriel didn’t even try to get his hands on Amélie again, and only looked at her as she walked around the room.

The tour was supposed to be quick. The room was, after all, quite small. But she lingered between the shelves of jars, stared at the disemboweled machines crashed on the floor, pressed two fingers against the cracks of the mirror.

“You are invited to come with me,” she said after a while, not even looking at Gabriel. It was more an order than an invitation, but her voice remained startlingly smooth.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you instead,” Gabriel huffed, after a snort.

Amélie did an about-turn to face him and crossed her arms. She seemed unimpressed. Or she just didn’t care to die, Gabriel thought. Probably both.

“Go ahead,” she said. “If you succeed, I’ll die, _bravo_. You’ll get me, but you’ll have to see me bloat and rot, trapped here again. The door will close if anything happens to me. And I don’t think you’ll get a chance to get out, after that.”

“I have nowhere to go anyway, so don’t tempt me,” Gabriel hissed, standing up, disregarding her comment about his nakedness. “I’ll enjoy tearing you apart.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Amélie scoffed. “But I can offer you help.”

“Why would I even want help from you, you–”

“We know what happened with Overwatch.”

Gabriel stopped short. Amélie chuckled.

“Baumann –we can help you find him, if you like to.”

The name was enough to make Gabriel’s blood boil. It was tempting, but…

“I don’t need your help,” he spat. “I know your kind. You’ll find a way to use me, to take everything I have left.”

“Oh, darling, we both know you have nothing left. Except vengeance, of course. But trust me, we’re not interested.”

Gabriel paused. He narrowed his eyes, suspicious, unable to pinpoint exactly what Amélie wanted from him. She sighed, waved her hand around.

“You find Baumann? All yours. We won’t interfere with your... Justice.”

In the silence of the room, the last word sounded an awful lot like “vengeance”. Gabriel squared his jaw. He didn’t want to join her. The “ _we_ ” she kept mentioning was a group he already known for a long time: Talon.

Talon had, at first, a goal similar to Overwatch’s: the end of the Omnic war. But, as the war ended, they remained active, as peace wasn’t a solution for them. They wanted the end of Omnics, pure and simple. No decrees, no laws, just... annihilation of any sentient being that wasn’t human.

With the horror of the Omnic crisis still fresh (it will always be) in his mind, Gabriel could have been, once, lured into their cause. Everything that happened in Egypt was quick to destroy any temptation he might had had, though.

That woman, standing in front of him, was the one who shot Ana in Egypt, and almost took out a full garrison of soldiers. She was talented, with a sniper rifle, extremely so –she almost got Jack too—.

 _Jack_. Gabriel screwed his eyes shut as he tried to push away the last memories he had of him ( _fire, blood, broken bones and panic; a litany of ‘oh Gabe, Gabe, what do I do, Gabe?’, pain not where his stomach was pierced; no, no. In his chest, in his heart_ ). It was almost unbearable, how guilt viciously gripped his guts.

Jack deserved better, Jack deserved to be alive, Jack... Jack deserved _justice_.

“If I join you,” Gabriel began, glad his distorted voice hid his hesitation, “What will you want from me?”

Amélie laughed. She knew she won.

“Anything you find in your investigation? You’ll share it. With us. No exception.”

 

 

Gabriel, wearing a hospital gown smelling of mold, listened to the gentle purr of the helicopter bringing them to Talon’s headquarters. They left wherever they were –Amélie was quite evasive about locations and Gabriel could only recognize the Alps from the window– a couple of hours ago, and most of the trip passed in a relative silence.

The aircraft was on auto-pilot, and beside them, there was no-one. Gabriel felt uncomfortable, to be confined in another enclosed area with no exit, but Amélie’s presence was… Reassuring.

Not that he liked her. Or trusted her. What only mattered was that he wasn’t alone again.

“Amélie,” Gabriel called, and Amélie, sat by the window, froze. The hand on her lap tightened into a fist.

Gabriel was quick to learn that Amélie hated her name. Until now, he used it three times –once when they met, once to ask how long the trip was going to be, once to ask where were they–. He only got silence as a reply, but he noticed how Amélie jumped every time she heard her name, how she tried to hide the regret and sadness and shame in her eyes.

Gabriel didn’t try to understand. He even told himself, with a sly grin, to use her name as a pressure point if needed.

“Amé–” he began, only to have the woman snap at him.

“Widowmaker,” she corrected harshly, with a sudden burst of emotion Gabriel was convinced she didn’t have. “Call me Widowmaker, or Widow, if you prefer, but stop with Amélie.”

“Widowmaker, then,” Gabriel said, tasting the name with a disdainful sneer. Then he asked, rather bluntly, “Why did you kill Gérard?”

Amélie stood up, and swept her eyes down on Gabriel’s face. Cold. Calculating. Her irises, unnaturally yellow, had something similar to Gabriel’s red ones.

“You know why. Gérard wanted Talon down.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes.

“I know that. But you, why did you do it? Was he just a target to seduce and kill? Did you fake your love for years just to bring him down?”

“I _loved_ him. I still do. But I had orders.”

Amélie was trembling, fingers twitching. Her lips were pursed with something she couldn’t bring herself to say, and Gabriel didn’t realize how easy it was, to sway her. A couple of words about her late husband she didn’t seem to care about and here she was; the doting wife, the loving wife, breaking through layers of unnatural detachment. Unnatural. _Unnatural_.

Gabriel stopped his relentless assault. For a long time, he just thought of Amélie not as a traitor, but as a dormant agent, a spy. Still, her blueish skin, her demeanor, her lack of emotions unless it _mattered_ , it wasn’t from training. Assassins weren’t like this. It was more than that and it was worse.

She was conditioned. Against her will.

Gabriel would feel like a jerk if the person in front of him wasn’t Amélie.

“Why didn’t you just disobey?” he still pressed. “If you loved him, you could have disobeyed.”

“Everything isn’t that easy,” Amélie said, voice cold. Somehow, she regained her composure, at least enough to sniff and say, haughtily, “Love doesn’t make anything easy and you of all people should know it.”

Gabriel gaped. “What?”

“I read your file and I know, we _all_ know, that you loved Jack Morrison. But he still died, didn’t he? He died. Under your watch.”

Gabriel stood up, growling, and Amélie rose her rifle, staring at him. She seemed to have forgotten how unsure and vulnerable she was a second ago.

“We both can play this game, _darling_. Now, before you do something you’re going to regret… Sit down.”

Gabriel wanted to argue, but knew better. He huffed and did as told, looking through the window, trying to ignore his brain telling him that Amélie was right.

Jack _did_ die under his watch.

Gabriel pressed his eyes shut until they hurt as he heard Amélie walk away, disappearing in the armory of the aircraft.

The rest of the trip passed in silence. They flew over forests and cities, lakes and rivers, before they finally arrived, the helicopter slowly descending onto the roof of Talon’s facility.

Amélie jumped down the helicopter with grace, and urged Gabriel to follow her with a tilt of her head.

The facility was smaller than Gabriel imagined. He imagined a grand building, with steel gaping doors ready to swallow him whole. He expected armed guards eyeing him suspiciously, following him and searching him. A little bit like how Overwatch used to be, before; in its prime.

It didn’t mean that Gabriel was wrong. The Talon headquarters were still impressive in size, except that everything was built underground. Jack, considering how much of a nerd he was, would probably have laughed and screamed “ _Batcave_ ” the moment his eyes found the many aircrafts in the underground hangar.

Gabriel stopped walking for a bit, watching both machinists and scientists talking in the hangar. His hearing was different from before, but still enhanced enough to let him hear them debating on whether they should add some weapons to an already threatening looking jet or not. Gabriel frowned as the Talon operatives laughed. They… seemed quite content to work for a terrorist organization.

“Widow!” another voice resounded in the corridor. It was cheery, sugary coasted, but Amélie still offered a tight smile to the woman running to them. Even if it seemed faked, there was a certain sincerity that most of her other expressions lacked.

A friend, then? Gabriel mused, eyeing the way too enthusiastic woman chat with Amélie, before she turned her attention to Gabriel. He immediately wrinkled his nose. There was something in her eccentric hairstyle, in the vibrant purple of her clothes, in her shit-eating grin that screamed danger.

“Hey, I’m Sombra! You are…?” she asked, head tilted in curiosity. She had a Mexican accent, something that made Gabriel curious. He spent quite some time there, after the Omnic crisis, especially in Dorado.

“You know who he is, Sombra,” Amélie said with a sigh, pulling Gabriel out of his thoughts.

Sombra groaned, turning back with a pout.

“I was being polite, Widow!” she protested.

Amélie snorted and turned back, walking again. She probably thought that she wasn’t needed anymore, as Sombra was here and seemingly quite eager to get to know Gabriel.

“Because you are usually so polite,” Amélie huffed. She was already too far to see Sombra make a face and hear her say, quietly, to Gabriel, “That’s… Nice finally meeting you.”

She trotted off, almost running to catch up with Amélie. Gabriel sighed, forcing himself to follow them. He didn't know where he was supposed to go anyway.

They walked on, advancing in a long corridor. Some screens, on the wall, instead of projecting rules and videos, showed looping videos of sceneries, making the place less gloomy. It was… Strangely considerate, for a terrorist organization.

Sombra, beside Amélie, noticed Gabriel’s interest for the screens and beamed at him, white teeth showing as she grinned. There was something in her that reminded Gabriel of Jesse.

 _Damn_. Gabriel missed that little shit.

Finally, the last door of the corridor –how dramatic, Gabriel thought with a roll of his eyes– hissed open to let the three of them enter a spacious, yet empty, office. Gabriel walked around trying to find something worth remembering, while Amélie decided to lean against the wall near the desk. Sombra fiddled with some holographic buttons, her clawed fingers dancing in the air, controlling something only she could see.

The lights dimmed as an hologram appeared. It was purposely grainy and blurry, neat enough to let Gabriel notice a silhouette appear in a mess of dark purple pixels. It was only what he could get: the mediocre quality of the hologram made Gabriel unable to know if he was talking to a man or a woman, if there was anything recognizable.

It was frustrating. Gabriel preferred to be able to put a face on a name. Or a voice.

“Hello, Gabriel Reyes. We are, as you guessed, Talon's... Leader. We cannot express how glad we are, to see you here, with us,” the hologram said. Hell, even the voice was heavily modified, Gabriel noted with a huff. “We do hope Widowmaker made you feel at ease.”

Gabriel snorted. “Very friendly. She shot me,” he deadpanned, and Sombra turned her face to Amélie, mouthing a “you did what” with an exaggerated shocked expression and comically wide eyes. Amélie didn’t hide her sinister grin.

“How regretful it is,” the hologram said, but didn’t really seem to care. “Widow can be quite impulsive, at times. We sincerely apologize.”

“Cut the shit, what do you want from me?” Gabriel interrupted the hologram. It sighed.

“Straight to the point… So be it. We believe Widowmaker has explained what we need from you, hasn’t she?”

“Yes. You get me out of wherever I was, give me what I need to find Baumann and investigate Overwatch’s fall, and I give you whatever information I find.”

“Succinctly summarized, thank you. We will need to add some other points, though, if we may.”

Gabriel tensed, held his breath. He didn’t say anything, waiting for the rest.

“Some of our missions will need your... Active participation. We’ll—”

“No,” Gabriel cut again, feeling anger knot his guts. The air of his chest rushed out. “I was just going to give you whatever intel I find. We didn’t say anything about me doing your dirty job.”

Another distorted sigh from the hologram.

“We don’t think you are in position to negotiate,” they said.

“Then the deal is off,” Gabriel retorted, turning back toward the door. He needed to go away from this place. From these walls made of steel. From these screens and these brainwashed agents.

Amélie pushed herself up in an instant. Her hand was already reaching her back to get the rifle hanging there but Gabriel didn’t care. He knew enough about his body to be sure bullets wouldn’t be able to stop him; at least, not anymore.

He raised an eyebrow at Amélie, a provocation; a dare. _Try to get me now_ , was what he was saying with a haughty glare.

“Sombra,” the inhuman voice said, politeness gone.

Sombra blinked at the hologram, visibly blanching. “I don’t think…” she began hesitantly, only to be cut.

“ _Sombra_.”

She winced, and Gabriel, somehow, knew something terrible was going to happen the moment she raised a hand a pressed a button he couldn’t see in front of her.

Gabriel crumbled down, the loud scream wanting to escape his throat transforming into a silent one. He felt as if he was burning and getting stabbed at the same time; as if needles were puncturing every single millimeter of his skin. He distantly felt his face collide against the cold floor.

He was trashing and writhing and moaning and yelling, almost begging for help; almost, because the pain turned him into an incoherent mess of pleas, made it impossible to think. He was probably pathetic, like this, but the pain… The pain was unbearable.

Gritting his teeth, Gabriel tried to crawl away, to reach the door, only to realize that he turned into smoke. He gasped. The smoke, his body, was stretched thinly all over the room, under the door, through the fabric of the rug. It was forced everywhere, in every corner it could reach, dissolved.

They were tearing him apart cell by cell, turning him into nothingness. A dismemberment, of sorts, magnified a thousand times.

It ceased as quickly as it began, and Gabriel, with his body back to normal, gasped on the floor, blinking at the ceiling. He was shaking uncontrollably, unshed tears burning his eyes.

“We weren’t asking, Reyes, so now, you’re going to listen carefully: we’re _allowing_ you some freedom, but trust us –misstep, and you’ll wish you died with Jack Morrison.”

Gabriel winced, unable to speak because of the shock. He was still trembling, lying on the floor. Not that far away, he noticed the medical gown he was wearing. He was naked again, it seemed.

“Now get up and leave,” the hologram said with disgust. “Sombra will lead you to Doctor Harada. She’ll get you your uniform, and brief you. We’ll be in touch.”

With that, the conversation was over. The hologram flickered off, and the lights grew brighter again.

Amélie exited the room without a look back, unconcerned by Gabriel’s state, as Sombra picked up the gown on the floor. She twirled the soft fabric in her hands as she slowly approached, hesitation making her steps light. She crouched down and tried to cover Gabriel’s shivering body with the gown, her movement slow, as if she was trying to approach a wild animal.

She looked genuinely guilty. Her eyebrows were knitted into a worried frown, her lower lip bitten red under her lipstick. Her eyes didn’t dare to meet Gabriel’s and she remained silent when he slapped her hand away. She still put the gown over him.

“Don’t touch me,” Gabriel snarled, curled on the floor.

“Sorry,” Sombra said. “But please, Gabriel, we need to meet Doctor Harada. She’ll help you.”

Gabriel sniffed, pushing himself up with a groan. He put on the gown again, and muttered, “She’ll help like Amélie helped me? Like _you_ helped me? No thanks.”

“No, no” Sombra hastily assured, hands wavering around frantically. “She won’t harm you, I promise.”

Gabriel stared at her for a long time, then sighed.

“Do I even have a choice?” he asked, defeated and too tired to care.

Sombra winced. She didn’t reply, only stood up. Gabriel cast his eyes down. He was a prisoner, again, but at least, it wasn’t worse than being trapped in Ziegler’s laboratory for eternity.

 

 

Maybe it as his overactive imagination, or the comics about superheroes and supervillains that influenced him, but Gabriel expected to meet a mad scientist with wild hair and vials of bright mixture all around her desk. 

Doctor Harada wasn’t mad, though. She was… Surprisingly normal.

Gabriel, sat on a medical bed of the laboratory, still stayed alert. He narrowed his eyes as the doctor fussed around her office, picking up samples of blood and muttering to herself. She was working for a terrorist organization that brainwashed a woman into killing her husband, after all, and so Gabriel stayed tense, ready to punch, claw, tear his way out. Sombra noticed his discomfort, but quickly retreated the hand she wanted to settle on Gabriel’s shoulder. After earlier’s fiasco, Sombra probably didn’t want to risk herself again.

“I’m glad you decided to join us,” Harada said with a warm smile, brushing a strand of hair away.  She turned on her microscope and several turbines. “I wish it was under better circumstances, but…”

“Spare me,” Gabriel interrupted with a scowl. “You work for the same organization that wanted Overwatch to fall. I bet you celebrated the day HQ fucking exploded.”

Harada blinked. “Hum,” she said, fidgeting. “I wanted Overwatch to stop threatening people and supporting Omnics, that’s all. I didn’t want people to die, and I’m sure most of us in Talon think the same. We’re here to protect mankind. We’ll never try to harm anyone.”

Gabriel looked at her with dubitative eyes. “So you think what happened to Amé—Widowmaker, wasn’t harming her? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Harada frowned, obviously confused. “She willingly joined us,” she said, slowly.

“What—”

“Doctor Harada, can you fetch Reyes’ suit, please?” Sombra suddenly butted in, her polite demand laced with an authority Gabriel didn’t notice until now. Harada turned brusquely back. She probably forgot Sombras’ presence.

“Of course,” she said, blinking.

The door swung open and Harada disappeared in the corridor, before Gabriel could even say anything. She left Sombra and Gabriel alone in the room; Sombra still leaning against the wall, arms crossed, Gabriel still on the bed, stiff and looking straight ahead.

“Most of them don’t know, about Widow. They don’t know about most experiments Talon did, in fact,” Sombra said, her voice carefully even. “They believe Omnics can’t be trusted, and Talon is here to protect mankind, that’s all. You can’t blame them for things they don’t know.”

Gabriel wrinkled his nose.

“Yeah, of course. It’s not like Talon isn’t listed as a terrorist organization everywhere.”

Sombra shrugged. “Brainwashing isn’t always violent,” she sighed. “Propaganda, isolation; they work as well as blackmail, sometimes.”

“Here, found it!” Harada barged in with a smile and a heap of black leather fabrics and an ivory mask.

She dropped them on the bed opposite of Gabriel’s, as he studied her closely. Sombra wasn’t lying. Harada was too cheery, exuded too much naiveté in her dark eyes, in the way she blushed and fidgeted when Sombra teased her. It wasn’t the behavior of someone knowingly supporting a terrorist group. Hell, even Sombra, for all her cheerfulness, had the eyes of someone who knew too much, who saw too much.

Gabriel pursed his lips. He pointed a finger at the suit.

“I… Hope you have a lot of them. I tend to be…” he began, waving his hand over his body. He didn’t say ‘naked’, but Harada seemed to understand since she turned beet red.

“Yes, hum, it has been made to perfectly support your…” she waved her hands around, “abilities. We really need to find a name for that. It’s _cool_.”

Gabriel frowned. “Wait, how do you know—”

Harada grinned excitedly. “Oh, doctor Ziegler called us a while ago, asking us about our self-regenerating experiments and nano-technologies,” she explained. “Unfortunately, she didn’t give any update after my boss graciously sent her our plans. But I’m glad everything went well for you! Your injuries were severe. Do you feel—”

“Harada, leave us,” Sombra suddenly said, standing up. The urgency in her voice made Harada obey without a single word.

Gabriel’s focus had drifted away from the conversation, and his control over his body was slipping away.

“Ziegler asked _Talon_. She asked _you_. She knew what happened to me and still left me,” he breathed when the door closed behind the doctor. He got the impression that if he didn’t whisper, he would yell; burst out in anger and trash the whole room. His fingers were already twitching; his shoulders a tense line. “She made me like this… And _you_ too. _You_ turned me like this. That's why… That's why you fucking know how to _torture_ me.”

“Yes,” Sombra said. “But it’s not that simple. She called us and begged us to save your life.”

“And you did, just like that? Bullshit.”

Sombra shook her head. “Talon is not running a charity. The boss accepted only if we could get you. And Ziegler accepted the deal to keep you alive.”

“Alive? How can you call me _alive_?” Gabriel roared, finally snapping, pushing himself up abruptly. He invaded Sombra’s space. The woman didn’t budge, despite the sharp teeth, the scars, the red eyes.

“’Ziegler saved your life, Reyes,” Sombra retorted, then added, “Or would you have preferred to be stuck in a coma, waiting for your body –or whatever left of it— to abandon you? We know what happened. It was already a miracle that she found you alive. For the rest of the world, Gabriel Reyes is dead.”

Gabriel gritted his teeth and stayed stubbornly silent, his eyes cast down. Sombra sighed. She picked up the suit Harada brought and the mask, mirroring what she did not even an hour ago. This time, though, she didn’t try to touch Gabriel. She just sat down, wrinkling the fabric in her hands.

“That’s… The Reaper suit,” she explained, pushing it beside Gabriel; forming a barrage between them. “It’s a bit used, but it works well. Try it on and… When you feel like it, we’ll train together. Boss said they’ll be in touch, so you better be prepared. They don’t sit idle for long.”

Facing silence again, Sombra pursed her lips. Her eyes flared into a vibrant purple, and when she raised a hand, Gabriel immediately cast her a horrified glance. Petrified with fear, he couldn’t even try to stop her. He watched, terrified, as Sombra pressed a button in front of her. The pain he expected never came, though.

“I’m not here to harm you,” Sombra said gently. “Not when I don’t need to. Look, Reyes: they listen to everything we say, and they watch whatever you do. So you need to get it together before they get impatient. Oh, and trust me, you don’t want them getting impatient.”

Gabriel stared at her, trying to find a lie.

“Why are you telling me this, then, if they are listening?” he asked, eyes jumping between her face and her finger, still lingering in the air.

“They are not, not now,” Sombra said with a grin. “I’m looping the video feed and made all that equipment,” she showed the running machines, “interfere with the mics.”

“How…”

“I hack. It’s my job. Now I know it’s a lot to take in, but get dressed, _Reaper_. We have work to do.” 

Sombra smiled, all teeth, and Gabriel relaxed a bit. He picked up the suit and the mask, staring at the latter wistfully.

“Reaper, huh?” he said.

Sombra shrugged.

“Well, Gabriel Reyes is dead, isn’t he?”

 

 


End file.
